"Oh, I don't know," he said, and with the least possible touch of irritation he added, "Sometimes I think it's because I don't like him. Everything that counts against him sticks--and I may have been mistaken anyway--" "It's something about Burdon," thought Mary, and in the same quiet voice as before she said, "What is it, Archey?" "Well," he said, hesitating, "I went out after dinner last night--to see if they were reading the bill-boards. I thought I'd walk down Jay Street--that's where the strikers have their headquarters. I was walking along when all at once I thought I saw Burdon's old car turning a corner ahead of me. "It stopped in front of Repetti's pool-room. Two men came out and got in. "A little while later I was speaking to one of our men and he said some rough actors were drifting in town and he didn't like the way they were talking. I asked him where these men were making their headquarters and he said, 'Repetti's Pool Room.'" Mary thought that over. "Mind you, I wouldn't swear it was Burdon's old car," said Archey, more troubled than before. "I can only tell you I'm sure of it--and I might be mistaken at that. And even if it was Burdon, he'd only say that he had gone there to try to keep the strike from spreading--yes, and he might be right at that," he added, desperately trying to be fair, "but--well, he worries me--that's all." He was worrying Mary, too, although for a different reason. With increasing frequency, Helen was coming home from the Country Club unconsciously scented with that combination of cigarette smoke and raspberry jam. Burdon had a new car, a swift, piratical craft which had been built to his order, and sometimes when he called at the house on the hill for Helen, Mary amused herself by thinking that he only needed a little flag-pole and a Jolly Roger--a skirted coat and a feathered hat--and he would be the typical younger son of romance, scouring the main in search of Spanish gold. Occasionally when he rolled to the door, Wally's car was already there, for Wally--after an absence--was again coming around, pale and in need of sympathy, singing his tenor songs to Helen's accompaniment and with greater power of pathos than ever, especially when he sang the sad ones at Mary's head-- "There in the churchyard, crying, a grave I se-ee-ee Nina, that sweet dove flying was thee-ee-ee, was thee--" "Ah, I have sighed for rest--" "--And if she willeth to destroy me I can die.... I can die...." After Wally had moved them all to a feeling of imminent tears, he would hover around Helen with a vague ambition of making her cousin jealous--a proceeding which didn't bother Mary at all. But she did worry about the growing intimacy between Helen and Burdon and, one evening when Helen was driving her up to the house from the factory, Mary tried to talk to her. "If I were you, Helen," she said, "I don't think I'd go around with Burdon Woodward quite so much--or come to the office to see him quite so often."