She looked at him intently, not quite understanding the unfriendly note in his voice. “I believe you are jealous!” she said. “You see too much,” rejoined Baron resentfully. “It isn’t that. You show too much!” “Of course, I ought to be grateful for criticism from such a source!” She regarded him with wonder, her eyes filling with tears. “You’ve no right to speak to me like that. You know I don’t need any money. You have all been so generous.... And it’s only because Mrs. Thornburg isn’t well, and because I don’t know her as well as I know you that I took money from her. She was so happy giving it to me. It would have been rude for me to refuse. But here--here I’ve been with friends!” She brushed the tears from her eyes and ran from the room. As in other times of stress, Mrs. Shepard and the kitchen became her refuge. Baron looked after her with an assumption of idle curiosity, but when he heard a distant door close his expression changed to real concern. He was dismayed when he thought how deeply he had wounded the child. He was aware of a sudden resentment against the Thornburgs. He sat down and gazed abstractedly at the carpet. He realized after a time that he was studying the meaningless outlines of a figure in faded colors. “We need a new carpet,” he mused. “We need everything new. And the only new thing we’ve got hold of in years is discovering that everything in the house, including ourselves, is threadbare, and respectable--and ugly.” Then he realized that Bonnie May had come back into the room and that she was almost impatiently trying to thrust her hand into his. “Oh, do let’s play nice parts,” she remonstrated. “You know, if you once start in melodrama it’s the hardest thing in the world to get into anything better.” He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head. “I think I make rather a silly villain,” he admitted. “You see, I know what troubled you. I thought it out. You thought I could care more for the things the Thornburgs do for me than I do for the lovely way you took me in here and were good to me. Wasn’t that it?” “Why, something like that.” “Well, that’s silly. Politeness--that’s all it’s been with them. But the way you took me in, and treated me, and everything.... You don’t think I could be such a little beast as not to understand all that, do you?” * * * * * There was no other friction for many days. Indeed, Bonnie May was less frequently absent when Baron came into the house from his journeys about the city. She seemed after all to be developing only a limited interest in the Thornburgs. Besides, Baron had a new interest thrust upon him. Baggot had arrived at a point in the development of his play which made him an incessant nuisance to all his acquaintances, and to Baron most of all. He could talk of nothing but his drama--“The Break of Day,” it was called--and he insisted upon consulting Baron, or inviting his admiration and approval, half a dozen times a day.