Maggie felt no repugnance to what had been said and implied by Barney.  How could she, when since her memory began she had lived among people who talked just these same things?  To Maggie they seemed the natural order.  At that moment she was more concerned by a fascinating necessity which Barney’s flamboyant enterprise entailed.

“But to do anything like that, won’t I need clothes?”

“You’ll need ’em, and you’ll have ’em!  You’re going to have one of the swellest outfits that ever happened.  You’ll make Paris ashamed of itself!”

“No use blowing the whole roll on Maggie’s clothes,” put in Old Jimmie, speaking for the first time.

Barney turned on him caustically, almost savagely.  “You’re a hell of a father, you are—­counting the pennies on his own daughter!  I told you this was no piker’s game, and you agreed to it—­so cut out the idea you’re in any nickel-in-the-slot business!”

Old Jimmie felt physical pain at the thought of parting from money on such a scale.  His earlier plans concerning Maggie had never contemplated any such extravagance.  But he was silenced by the dominant force behind Barney’s sarcasm.

“Miss Grierson—­she’s your companion—­knows what’s what about clothes,” continued Barney to Maggie.  “Here’s the dope as I’ve handed it to her.  You’re an orphan from the West, with some dough, who’s come to New York as my ward and Jimmie’s and we want you to learn a few things.  To her and to any new people we meet I’m your cousin and Jimmie is your uncle.  You’ve got that all straight?”

“Yes,” said Maggie.

“You’re to use another name.  I’ve picked out Margaret Cameron for you.  We can call you Maggie and it won’t be a slip-up—­see?  If any of the coppers who know you should tumble on to you, just tell ’em you dropped your own name so’s to get clear of your old life.  They can’t do anything to you.  And tell ’em you inherited a little coin; that’s why you’re living so swell.  They can’t do anything about that either. . . .  Here’s where we get out.  Got a sitting-room, two bedrooms and a bath hired for you here.  But we’ll soon move you into a classier hotel.”

The taxi had stopped in front of one of the unpretentious, respectable hotels in the Thirties, just off Fifth Avenue, and Maggie followed the two men in.  This hotel did, indeed, in its people, its furnishings, its atmosphere, seem sober and commonplace after the Ritzmore; but at the Ritzmore she had been merely a cigarette-girl, a paid onlooker at the gayety of others.  Here she was a real guest—­here her great life was beginning!  Maggie’s heart beat wildly.

Up in her sitting-room Barney introduced her to Miss Grierson, then departed with a significant look at Old Jimmie, saying he would return presently and leaving Old Jimmie behind.  Old Jimmie withdrew into a corner, turned to the racing part of the Evening Telegram, which, with the corresponding section of the Morning Telegraph, was his sole reading, and left Maggie to the society of Miss Grierson.