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You ain't done nothin'. But you're goin' to do somethin' talk!" Simmy's pale tongue swept across working lips. "What ... you want wantta ... know?" he stuttered. "You expectin' to meet some friends heah?" "Th' rest o' the boys an' th' cap'n; they may be ketchin' up." "How many 'boys'?" Simmy's tongue tripped again. He swallowed. Drew thought he was trying to produce a crumb of defiance.
Relieved of the weight that had pressed them down to an inconceivable depth, Simmy's spirits popped upward with an effervescence so violent that there was absolutely no containing them. They flowed all over the place. All day long and most of the night they were active.
The nurses, the doctors, the extra servants, Anne's maid, Anne herself, the indomitable Lutie, and, on occasions, the impressive Mrs. Tresslyn,—all of these went to make up Simmy's family. The nurses were politely domineering: they told him what he could do and what he could not do, and he obeyed them with a cheerfulness that must have shamed them.
He was on the point of ordering a taxi-cab when his attention was drawn to a figure that lurked well back in the shadows of the Berkeley Theatre down the street—a tall figure in a long ulster. Despite the darkness, Simmy's intense stare convinced him that it was George Tresslyn who stood over there and gazed from beneath lowered brows at the bright doorway.
After a long delay Simmy's cheery voice came singing—or rather it was barking—into her ear. This had been the greatest day in the life of Simeon Dodge. From early morn he had gone about in a state of optimistic unrest. He was more excited than he had ever been in his life before,—and yet he was beatifically serene.
A man shouted hoarsely and Drew strove to avoid a kick, struggling to win to his feet, unable to tell just what was happening. Disaster Simmy's animallike howling filled the room. Jas', his hand bleeding afresh, sopping through the bandage his captors had twisted about the wound, sprawled forward, clawing with those reddened fingers for the Spencer.
Would she be proof against him if he set out to reconquer? She seemed so serene, so sure of herself. Was it a pose or had love really died within her? By no means the least important of the happenings in Simmy's house was the short but decisive contest that took place between Lutie and Mrs. Tresslyn. They met first in the sick-room, and the shock was entirely one- sided.
He would tell her what to do. But Simmy's man told her that his master had just gone away in the motor with Dr. Thorpe,—for a long ride into the country. Scarcely knowing what she did she hurried on to Lutie's apartment, far uptown. "What on earth is the matter, Anne?" cried the gay little wife as her sister-in-law stalked into the tiny drawing-room and threw herself dejectedly upon a couch.
"I am sorry," she said, a queer glint in her eyes. "Sorry he took it away with him, I mean. There is nothing I can do—now." She sent for her mother that night. The next morning Simmy Dodge came down with George Tresslyn, who steadfastly refused to enter the house but rode to the hospital with his mother and sister in Simmy's automobile.
There followed a few moments of comparative quiet. Then came a startling, sickening sound as of some one undergoing the tortures of strangulation. Then, a long, convulsive gasp. I looked down upon a sea of round eyes and uplifted hands. "Teacher, Simmy's swallered a slate-pencil! Simmy's swallered a slate-pencil!" "He's swallered most a whole one!" cried the owner of one pair of protruding orbs.
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