"
"Dear me! In other words, I am a conundrum. Who will guess me?"
"You are the Sphinx," replied her cousin.
"I won't be that ugly-faced thing," she retorted; "guess again."
"Impossible. Once acquire a sphinx's elusiveness and you are a mystery
perpetual. You alone can unriddle the riddle."
"I can't. I give myself up."
"Not so fast, young woman," broke in her father, shutting his magazine and
settling his glasses more firmly upon his nose; "that is an office I alone
can perform. Who has been hunting on my preserves?"
"Alas! They are not tempting, so be quite calm on that score." She sat up
with a forlorn sigh, adding, "Think of it, Father, twenty-two, and not a
heart to hang on my chatelaine."
"Hands are supposed to mean hearts nowadays," said Louis, reassuringly; "I
am sure you have mittened one or two."
"Oh, yes," she answered, laughing evasively, "both of little Toddie
Flynn's. Mamma, don't you think I am too big a baby for you to hold long?"
She sprang up, and drawing a stool before her father's chair, exclaimed, --
"Now, Father, a grown-up Mother-Goose story for my birthday; make it short
and sweet and with a moral like you."
Mr. Levice patted her head and rumpled the loosely gathered hair.
"Once upon a time," he began, "a little boy went into his father's
warehouse and ate up all the sugar in the land.
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