"Well," she said, warmly, "I mean to go on being good--better--best to you; for I'm studying out a plan to get your things away from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and all the same to keep you out of trouble. You're a foreigner, and don't understand our ways yet, but I'll see you through all right."
"How are you going to do that, my guardian angel?" Val smiled at the pretty Jewess.
Isidora had the sensation of being bathed in perfumed cream. His "guardian angel"! She had been called a number of nice things, such as a "real beaut," a high-flyer and a Floradora; but no one had ever hailed her as his guardian angel before, and with all her heart she vowed that she would live up to the name.
"I don't know exactly yet how I'll do it," she admitted. "But you leave it to me, and it'll be done, you'll see. Only give me an order signed 'Loveland,' to bring away anything of yours from the hotel. Meantime, I've thought of one thing, which is, you'd better not be seen here till we're sure they ain't onto you, through that messenger boy. I tell you what; I've got a lady friend in this street, Mrs. Johnny Gernsbacher, who's lookin' after an empty house that's for rent."
"I guess that's right. Me and Mrs. Gernsbacher's good friends. She's a widow lady, quite old, 'most forty-five, so she'll do for a chaperon. Pa had her boy here once to wait, and then through me and friends of mine he got a better job outside. She'd be glad to do me a good turn. You can see to things here for five minutes till I run across and ask if she'll let you stay there in the house, as a friend of mine, till you have time to look around."
"_I_--see to things?" echoed Loveland, blankly.
"Yes. If anybody comes in, they'll take you for a swell waiter, in those clothes. They'll think Alexander the Great's startin' in for uptown style."
She laughed with amusement at the joke, and Loveland laughed, too, though not very heartily. He was not enchanted at the idea of being mistaken for a "swell waiter," but beggars must not be choosers, and he offered no objection to the plan.
Wrapping over her head a red crocheted scarf which she called a "fascinator," Isidora darted into the street, panting with haste lest the worst should happen in her absence, and her father take it into his head to come downstairs. But she had seen him last dozing over the Police News, in a quilted home-made dressing-gown, and that was such a short time ago that she hardly thought there was danger of a surprise.