“Oh, Tom, I don’t believe it will do any good.  She won’t come, and all my girl friends will arrive shortly.”  Miss Nestor was quite distressed.

“Leave it to me,” suggested the lad, with an assumed confidence he did not feel.  He left the car, and walked toward the office.  Entering it, with Miss Nestor in his wake, he saw a pleasant-faced Irish girl, sitting on a bench, with a bundle beside her.

“And so you don’t want to ride in an auto?” began Tom.

“No, an’ it’s no use of the likes of you askin’ me, either,” answered the girl, but not impudently.  “I am afeered of thim things, an’ I won’t work in a family that owns one.”

“But we don’t own one,” said Mary.

The girl only sniffed.

“It is the very latest means of traveling,” Tom went on, “and there is absolutely no danger.  I will drive slowly.”

“No!” snapped the new cook.

Tom was rather at his wits’ ends.  At that moment the telephone rang, and Tom and Mary, listening, could hear the proprietress of the intelligence office talking to Mrs. Duy Puyster over the wire.

“We must get her away soon,” whispered Mary, with a nod at the Irish girl, “or we’ll lose her.”

Tom was thinking rapidly, but no plan seemed to come to him.  A moment later one of the assistants of the office led out from a rear room another Irish girl,—­who, it seems, had just engaged herself to work in the country.

“Good-by, Bridget,” said this girl, to the one Mary Nestor had hired.  “I’m off now.  The carriage has just come for me.  I’m goin’ away in style.”

“Good luck, Sarah,” wished Bridget.

Tom looked out of the window.  A dilapidated farm wagon, drawn by two rusty-looking horses, just drawing up at the curb.

“There is your employer, Sarah,” said the proprietress of the office.  “You will have a nice ride to the country and I hope you will like the place.”

A typical country farmer alighted from the wagon, leaving a woman, evidently his wife, or the seat.  He called out: 

“I’ll git th’ servant-gal, ‘Mandy, an’ we’ll drive right out hum.  Then you won’t have such hard work any more.”

“An’ so that’s the style you was tellin’ me of; eh, Sarah?” asked the cook whom Miss Nestor had engaged.  “That’s queer style, Sarah.”

Sarah was blushing from shame and mortification.  Tom was quick to seize the advantage thus offered.

“Bridget, if you appreciate style,” he said, “you will come in the automobile.  I have one of the very latest models, and it is very safe.  But perhaps you prefer a farm wagon.”

“Indade an’ I don’t!” was the ready response.  “I’ll go wid you now if only to show Sarah Malloy thot I have more style than her!  She was boastin’ of the fine place she had, an’ th’ illigant carriage that was comin’ t’ take her to the counthry.  If that’s it I want none of it!  I’ll go wid you an’ th’ young gintleman.  Style indade!” and, gathering up her bundle she followed Tom and Mary to the waiting auto.