“Now, then,” said Charlie Sands, “out with it!  What have you been up to this time?”

Tish returned his gaze calmly.  “We have been in the Maine woods in the holy calm,” she said.  “As for those furs, I suppose a body may buy a set of furs if she likes.”  This, of course, was not a lie.  “As for that card, it’s a mistake.”  Which it was indeed.

“But—­Dorothea!” persisted Charlie Sands.

“Never in my life knew anybody named Dorothea.  Did you, Aggie?”

“Never,” said Aggie firmly.

Charlie Sands apologized and looked thoughtful.  On Tish’s remaining rather injured, he asked us all out to dinner that night, and almost the first thing he ordered was frogs’ legs.  Aggie got rather white about the lips.

“I—­I think I’ll not take any,” she said feebly.  “I—­I keep thinking of Tish tickling their throats with the hairpin, and how Percy—­”

We glared at her, but it was too late.  Charlie Sands drew up his chair and rested his elbows on the table.

“So there was a Percy as well as a Dorothea!” he said cheerfully.  “I might have known it.  Now we’ll have the story!”

TISH’S SPY

THE ADVENTURE OF THE RED-HEADED DETECTIVE, THE LADY CHAUFFEUR, AND THE MAN WHO COULD NOT TELL THE TRUTH

I

It is easy enough, of course, to look back on our Canadian experience and see where we went wrong.  What I particularly resent is the attitude of Charlie Sands.

I am writing this for his benefit.  It seems to me that a clean statement of the case is due to Tish, and, in less degree, to Aggie and myself.

It goes back long before the mysterious cipher.  Even the incident of our abducting the girl in the pink tam-o’-shanter was, after all, the inevitable result of the series of occurrences that preceded it.

It is my intention to give this series of occurrences in their proper order and without bias.  Herbert Spencer says that every act of one’s life is the unavoidable result of every act that has preceded it.

Naturally, therefore, I begin with the engagement by Tish of a girl as chauffeur; but even before that there were contributing causes.  There was the faulty rearing of the McDonald youth, for instance, and Tish’s aesthetic dancing.  And afterward there was Aggie’s hay fever, which made her sneeze and let go of a rope at a critical moment.  Indeed, Aggie’s hay fever may be said to be one of the fundamental causes, being the reason we went to Canada.

It was like this:  Along in June of the year before last, Aggie suddenly announced that she was going to spend the summer in Canada.

“It’s the best thing in the world for hay fever,” she said, avoiding Tish’s eye.  “Mrs. Ostermaier says she never sneezed once last year.  The Northern Lights fill the air with ozone, or something like that.”