Harriet Hamlin was restless and nervous all the next day. Even Mr. Hamlin, noticing his daughter’s nervous manner at luncheon, suggested that she take her friends out to pay some calls. So Bab put forth her plea that she wished to make another visit to the home of the Chinese minister. As the girls had not yet paid their luncheon call at the embassy Harriet agreed to take them to see Wee Tu. Before she left the house Harriet called up her dressmaker and had a long confidential talk with her over the telephone. She seemed in better spirits afterwards.

The Chinese minister’s wife, Lady Tu, was receiving. As there were no men in the drawing-room, her daughter, Wee Tu, sat among the young girls as quiet and demure as a picture on a fan.

Bab managed to persuade the little girl into a corner to have a quiet chat with her. But Miss Wee Tu was difficult to draw out. Across the room, Harriet Hamlin chanced to mention the name of Peter Dillon. At once the little Chinese girl’s expression changed. The change was very slight. Hardly a shade of emotion crossed her unexpressive, Oriental face, but curious Barbara was watching for that very change. She remembered the young girl had been affected by Peter’s appearance during their former visit.

“Do you like Mr. Dillon?” inquired Bab. She had no excuse for her question except her own wilful curiosity.

But Wee Tu was not to be caught napping.

“Lige?” she answered, with a soft rising inflection that made the “k” in “like” sound as “g.” “I do not know what Americans mean by the word ­’Lige.’ You ‘lige’ so many people. A Chinese girl ‘liges’ only a few ­her parents, her relatives; sometimes she ‘liges’ her husband, but not always.”

“Don’t like your husband!” exclaimed Bab in surprise. “Why, what do you mean?”

The little Chinese maiden was confused both by the American word and the American idea.

“The Chinese girl has respect for her husband; she does what he tells her to do, but she does not all the time ‘lige’ him, because her father has chosen him for her husband. I shall marry a prince, when I go back to China, but he is ‘verrà’ old.”

“Oh, I see!” Bab rejoined. “You thought I meant ‘love’ when I said ‘like.’ It is quite different to love a person.” Bab smiled wisely. “To love is to like a great deal.”

“Then I love this Mr. Peter Dillon,” said the Chinese girl sweetly.

Bab gasped in shocked surprise.

“It is most improper that I say so, is it not?” smiled Miss Wee Tu. “But so many things that American girls do seem improper to Chinese ladies. And I do like this Mr. Peter very much. He comes always to our house. He is ‘verrà’ intimate with my father. He talks to him a long, long time and they have Chinese secrets together. Then he talks with me so that I can understand him. Many people will not trouble with a Chinese girl, who is only fifteen, even if her father is a minister.”

Barbara was overwhelmed with Wee Tu’s confidence, but she knew she deserved it as a punishment for her curiosity. The strangest thing was that the young Chinese girl spoke in a low, even voice, without the least change of expression in her long, almond eyes. Any one watching her would have thought she was talking of the weather.

“I go back to China when my father’s time in the United States is over and then I get married. It makes no difference. But while I am in your country I play I am free, like an American girl, and I do what I like inside my own head.”

“It’s very wrong,” Barbara argued hastily. “It is much better to trust to your parents.”

“Yes?” answered Wee Tu quietly. Bab was vexed that Peter Dillon’s careless Irish manners had also charmed this little Oriental maiden. But Bab was wise enough to understand that Wee Tu’s interest was only that of a child who was grateful to the young man for his kindness.

Barbara rose to join her friends, who were at this moment saying good-bye to their hostess.

“It is the Chinese custom,” Lady Tu remarked graciously, “to make little presents to our guests. Will not Mr. Hamlin’s daughter and her four friends receive these poor offerings?”

A servant handed the girls five beautiful, carved tortoise shell boxes, containing exquisite sets of combs for their hair, the half dozen or more that Chinese women wear.

“I felt ashamed of my wind-blown hair when Lady Tu presented us with these combs,” Grace exclaimed, just before the little party reached home. They had paid a dozen more calls since their visit to the Chinese Embassy. “I suppose Chinese women are shocked at the way American girls wear their hair.”

“Yes, but we can’t take three hours to fix ours,” laughed Mollie, running up the steps of the Hamlin house. In the front hall Mollie spied an immense box of roses. They were for Harriet. Harriet picked up the box languidly and started upstairs. She had talked very little during the afternoon, and had seemed unlike herself.

“Aren’t you going to open your flowers, Harriet?” Mollie pleaded. “I am crazy to see them.”

“I’ll open them if it pleases you, Mollie,” Harriet returned gently. The great box was crowded with long-stemmed American beauties and violets.

“Have some posies, girls?” Harriet said generously, holding out her arms filled with flowers. For a long time afterwards the “Automobile Girls” remembered how beautiful Harriet looked as she stood there, her face very pale, her black hair and hat outlined against the dark oak woodwork with the great bunch of American beauties in her arms.

“Of course we don’t want your posies, Lady Harriet,” Mollie answered affectionately. “Here is the note to tell you who sent them to you.” But Harriet went on to her room without showing enough interest in her gift to open the letter.

After dinner Harriet complained of a headache, and went immediately to her room. The “Automobile Girls” were going out to a theater party, which was being given in their honor by their old friends, Mrs. Post and Hugh. Harriet sent word she would have to be excused. When Ruth put her head into Harriet’s room to say good-bye, just before she started for the theater, she thought she heard her cousin crying.

“Harriet, dear, do let me stay with you,” Ruth pleaded. “I am afraid you are feeling worse than you will let us know.”

But Harriet insisted that she desired only to be left alone. Feeling strangely unhappy about her cousin, Ruth, at last joined the theater party.

Mr. Hamlin did not leave the house immediately after dinner, although he had an engagement to spend the evening at the home of Mrs. Wilson. She had asked him, only that morning, to come. Mr. Hamlin was also troubled about his daughter. He had not been so unobservant that he had not seen the change in her. She was less animated, less talkative. Mr. Hamlin feared Harriet was not well. Though he was stern and unsympathetic with Harriet, he was genuinely frightened if she were in the least ill.

So it was with unusual gentleness that he tapped lightly on Harriet’s door.

“I am all right, Mary, thank you,” Harriet replied, believing her maid to be outside. “Go to bed whenever you please. I shall fall asleep after a while.”

Mr. Hamlin cleared his throat and Harriet started nervously. Why was her father standing outside her door? Had he learned of her bill to her dressmaker?

“I do not wish to disturb you, Harriet,” Mr. Hamlin began awkwardly. “I only desired to know if I could do anything for you.”

“No, Father,” poor Harriet replied wearily. As Mr. Hamlin turned away, she sprang up and started to run after him. At her own door she stopped. She heard her father’s stern voice giving an order to a servant, and her sudden resolution died within her. A few moments later the front door closed behind him and her opportunity had passed.

An hour afterwards, when the house was quiet and the servants nowhere about, Harriet Hamlin slipped cautiously downstairs. She was gone only a few minutes. But when she came back to her own room, she opened a private drawer in her bureau and hid something in it. Harriet then threw herself on her bed and lay for a long time with her eyes wide open, staring straight ahead of her.

Just before midnight, when she heard the gay voices of her friends returning from the theater, and when Ruth tripped softly to her bedroom, Harriet lay with closed eyes, apparently fast asleep.

The next morning Harriet was really ill. Her hand trembled so while she poured the breakfast coffee that she spilled some of it on the tablecloth. When Mr. Hamlin spoke to her sharply she burst into tears and left the room, leaving her father ashamed of himself, and the “Automobile Girls” so embarrassed that they ate the rest of their breakfast in painful silence. Ruth did dart one indignant glance at her uncle, which Mr. Hamlin saw, but did not in his heart resent.

Harriet was willing, that morning, to have Ruth come into her darkened bedroom and sit by her bed. For Harriet’s wakeful night had left her slightly feverish.

“I don’t want to disturb you, Harriet,” Bab apologized, coming softly to the door. “But some one has just telephoned for you. The person at the telephone has a message for you, but whoever it is refuses to give his name. What shall I do!”

Harriet sat up in bed, quickly, a hunted expression on her beautiful face. “Tell Mr. Peter Dillon that I will keep my word,” Harriet answered angrily. “He is not to worry about me again.”

“Is that your message?” Bab queried wonderingly. “It was not Mr. Dillon’s voice.”

Harriet laughed hysterically. “Of course not!” she returned. “Oh, I know you girls are wondering why I am behaving so strangely. And I am breaking my word to tell you. But I must tell some one. I don’t care what Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon say, I know I can trust you. I have decided to help Mrs. Wilson and Peter play their silly joke on Father and the State Department! Oh, you needn’t look so horrified, girls. It is only a joke. The papers are about some Chinese business. I have them hid in my bureau drawer.”

Harriet nodded toward her dressing-table, while Ruth and Bab stood looking at each other, speechless with horror, the same idea growing in their minds.

“When Father comes to look for his stupid papers he’ll find them gone, and, of course, will think he has misplaced them,” Harriet continued. “He will be dreadfully worried for a little while; then Mrs. Wilson will return the papers to me and I will slip them back in their old place, and Father will never know what has happened. Mrs. Wilson and Peter have vowed they will never betray me, and I have promised not to betray them. If I were to be caught, I suppose Father would never forgive me. But I’ll take good care that he doesn’t find out about it.”

“Harriet, do please give up this foolish plan!” Ruth entreated earnestly. “I know you are doing something wrong. Mrs. Wilson and Mr. Dillon both know that Uncle William’s papers are too valuable to be played with. Why, they belong to the United States Government, not to him! Harriet, I implore you, do not touch your father’s papers!”

Harriet shook her head obstinately. She was absolutely adamant. Ruth pleaded, scolded, in vain. Bab did not say a word nor enter a protest. She was too frightened. All of a sudden a veil had been rent asunder. Now she believed she understood what Peter Dillon and Mrs. Wilson had planned from the beginning. They were spies in the service of some higher power. The papers that Harriet thought were to be used for a joke on her father were really to be sold! Was not some state secret to be betrayed? Ever since Bab’s arrival in Washington it had looked as though Peter Dillon and Mrs. Wilson had been working toward this very end. Having failed with her they had turned their attention to poor Harriet. But Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon must be only hired tools! Shrewdly Barbara Thurston recalled her recent conversation with innocent Wee Tu: “Mr. Dillon and my father, they have Chinese secrets together.” Could a certain distinguished and wisely silent Oriental gentleman be responsible for the thrilling drama about to be enacted? Bab was never to know positively, and she wisely kept her suspicion to herself.

“I do wish, Ruth, you and Bab would go away and leave me alone,” Harriet protested. “I shall be well enough to get up for luncheon, if you will let me take a nap. I don’t see any harm in playing this joke on Father. At any rate, I have quite made up my mind to go through with my part in it and I won’t give up my plan. You can tell Father if you choose, of course. I cannot prevent that. I know I was foolish to have confided in you. But, unless you are despicable tale bearers, the papers in my bureau drawer will go out of this house in a few hours! I don’t see any harm in their disappearing for a little while. Father will have them back in a few days. Please go!”

Yet with all Harriet’s air of bravado, however, there was one point in her story which she did not mention. In return for her delivery of certain of her father’s state papers Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon had promised to advance to Harriet the five hundred dollars necessary to pay her dressmaker. Harriet had agreed only to receive it as a loan. And she tried to comfort herself with the idea that her friends were only doing her a kindness in exchange for the favor she was to do for them. Still, the thought of the money worried Harriet. But how else was she to be saved from the weight of her stern father’s displeasure?