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The blazing young eyes were on Miss Sessions's tortured countenance. "Oh, don't let those men get at Gray. They'll murder him!" sobbed the older woman, sinking once more to her knees. "Johnnie I've always been good to you, haven't I? You go and tell them that say that Shade Buckheath that somebody ought to " She broke off abruptly, and sprang up like a suddenly goaded creature.
"Well, I should be a little puzzled to put it into words," Miss Sessions answered him with a deprecating smile; "and yet it's there the feeling that John Consadine is I hate to say it ungrateful." "Ungrateful," repeated her companion, his eyes steadily on Miss Sessions's face. "To leave Johnnie Consadine out of the matter entirely, what else do you expect from any of your protégées?
Somebody who had been kneeling by the bed on the further side of the room sprang up and came forward, showing a face so disfigured by tears and anxiety, by loss of sleep and lack of food, as to be scarcely recognizable. That ravaged visage told plainly the battle-ground that Lydia Sessions's narrow soul had become in these dreadful days.
It was all over in a moment. The loom-fixers had debouched upon the long, wooden bridge which crossed the ravine to their quarters; the girls were going on, Mandy Meacham hanging back and staring; a tree finally shut out Miss Sessions's accusing countenance. "Please stop and let me out here," said Johnnie, in a scarcely audible voice.
"Mahala!" screamed Miss Sessions's voice over the banisters, thinking the maid was below stairs; "answer that telephone." She heard Johnnie move, and added, "Tell everybody that I can't be seen. If it's anything about Mr. Stoddard, say that I'm sick utterly prostrated and can't be talked to." She turned from the stairway, ran back into her own room and shut and locked the door.
Major, that is not fair to Quinn!" said Ferry. Yet when he took up the paper again he gazed on it with a happy gravity; it made him a captain. "By the by," he said, "that Yankee horse that Dick Smith captured at Sessions's; I'd like to buy that horse from you, Major." They made the sale. "And there's that captured ambulance still here, Major, with its team eating their heads off."
Deliberately ignoring the mother who waited at home, she determined to spend a riotous evening going to a real theater, a real play. That is, if she could get a fifty-cent seat. She could not. "It's been exciting, running away, even if I can't go to the theater," Una comforted herself. "I'll go down to Lady Sessions's this evening. I'll pack mother off to bed.
"Begin here," Cassie prompted her assistant, and Johnnie, stopping, offered her tray of cups. Gray's indignant glance went from the girl herself to his hostess. What foolery was this? Why should Johnnie Consadine dress herself as a servant and wait on Lydia Sessions's guests?
I " she hesitated "I thought maybe we could get your brother Hartley's car. I could run it I could run a car." The bitterness that had racked Lydia Sessions's heart for more than forty-eight hours culminated. She had been instrumental in putting Gray Stoddard in mortal danger and now if he was to be helped, assistance would come through Johnnie Consadine! It was more than she could bear.
As the young fellow strode along he was turning in his mind Lydia Sessions's promise to talk to him this morning about Johnnie. "But she'll be in bed and asleep, I reckon, at this time of day," he ruminated. "The good Lord knows I would if I had the chance like she has." As he came in sight of the Hardwick house, he checked momentarily.
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