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“All right,” her father’s tone was grave enough to mean a great deal more than the present enterprise; he spread out his color-box and paints on the desk, made some further exclamation in a low tone, and went to work. There was silence in the office. Hilda knew that she ought to slip away. She was just going to do so when she saw Uncle Hank purse up his lips, look very fiercely at the needle which he was holding at a considerable distance from his face, finally thread it, and begin to speak, not to her father at all but to something he had evidently propped up on his end of the desk in front of him. It must be that product he had called “a pretty fair Van Brunt.” Shaking a finger at it, he began to sew on some small white object, glancing occasionally over his spectacles toward the invisible doll, murmuring to her:

“Now, you set there, Miss—well, what is your blessed name?—Miss Bon Bon—Miss High Stepper—Miss Tip-Top—and mind how you shoot off your mouth to-morrow. Ye want to be mighty clear on one point, and that is that you came from Fort Worth. Pa was just saving a little surprise when he failed to mention you to Pettie to-day. You was right there in that grip of his’n all the time; so don’t let me hear any remarks about a bronco sewing-machine, nor white domestic, nor Charley’s paint-box, nor Uncle Hank’s number forty sewing thread. Mind what I’m telling you, Miss Tip-Top; we don’t want a word of and concerning the spare-room bed-comfort. Fort Worth’s where you come from—Fort Worth; a-bringing the latest fashions in young-lady dolls; and Pettie’s not to be told things.”