CHAPTER THANET Baxter bounced along the sidewalk like a truant schoolgirl.

It was starting to get late and the shops were beginning to close, but the streets yet teemed with life.

The night was still cool, but the air was full of springtime and the promise of the days to come.

Every stoop, porch, and open window buzzed with conversation. The folks in the old

neighborhood had spent a long winter indoors, and they were clearly making up for lost time

with their favorite game. Gossip. Kit had grown up in this neighborhood, spent her entire

life here, and she knew every family, every building. From some Stoop's voices called to her, hands

waved as she passed. From others there were no such greetings. But Kit Baxter knew that every

gathering had a new subject to discuss after she was gone. Her. How she was never around much

anymore, how her job as a chauffeur to the city's most notorious playboy, kept her out until all hours, how she would never be able to settle down at this rate.

Some would come to her defense, of course, they would point out that at least she was working, and that these days people had to take what they could get and be glad of it.

It was, to be sure, a better occupation for a pretty young thing than her old job driving a cab.

Kit made a decent living and she took care of her mother like a good girl.

No one would deny any of that, of course.

There were those who thought that Kit spent too much time with that ne'er-do-well boss of hers to be any good.

Still others thought she might carry a torch for the rich bird.

But they wouldn't dare voice those thoughts too loud.

Even among gossips there is such a thing as carrying matters too far.

Besides, the fact that Kit kept her old apartment,

rather than moving into the servants' quarters at his Nibs' mansion, seemed to prove there was nothing unusual between them.

It was on this last point that the gossips on the front stoops were dead wrong.

Kit smiled as she walked past, thinking how little they could possibly dream the truth,

...