"Gee!" said the smart youth, "ain't she the friendliest bunch of calico." "This case," said the noble Patrolman McDonogh with unpunctual inspiration, "had ought to be looked into by rights." "Chauffeur," said John Sedyard to the shadowy form before him, "just pick out the darkest streets, will you?" "Yes, sir," answered the chauffeur looking up into the bland smile and the outstretched hand above him. "I'll make it if I can but if we get stopped, don't blame me." A year later, or so it seemed to John Sedyard, the taxicab, panting with indignation at the insults and interferences to which it had been subjected, turned into Sedyard's eminently respectable block and drew up before his eminently handsome house. He paid and propitiated the chauffeur, took his lovely burden in his arms and staggered up the steps with the half regretful feeling of one who steps out of the country of adventure back to prosaic things. He found his latchkey, opened his door and drew Maudie into the hall. And on the landing half-way up the stairs stood his sister Edith, evidently the bearer of some pleasant tidings. Maudie's smile flashed up at her from John's shoulder. Edith stared, stiffened, and retraced her steps. John wheeled the figure into the reception-room and thus addressed it: "Listen to me, you dumbhead. You may think this adventure is over. Well, so did I, but I tell you now it's only just beginning. If you are not mighty careful you will be wrecking a home. So keep your mouth shut," he charged her, "and do nothing till you hear from me!" Maudie smiled archly, coyly, confidentially, and he went upstairs. In the sitting-room, he found gathered together his mother, his sister and Dick Van Plank, Mary's young brother and a student at Columbia. John was supported through Edith's first remark and the look with which she accompanied it by the memory of her goodness to Mary and by the anticipation of the fun which Maudie might be made to provide. "I wish to say, John," she began, before any one else had time to speak, "that I've said _nothing_ to mother or Dick, and I think it would be better if you didn't. I can attend to the case if you leave it to me." "Like you," said John shortly. "Who told you she is a 'case.' Mother," he went on addressing that gentle knitter by the fire, "I want you to come downstairs." "She shall do nothing of the kind!" cried Edith, and as Mrs. Sedyard looked interrogatively from one to another of her children, her daughter swept on. "John must be crazy, I saw him come in with a--a person--who never ought to be in a house like this." "I'd like to know why not?" stormed John. "You don't know a thing about her. _I_ don't know much for that matter, but when I came across her down on Union Square, just turned out of a shop where she had been working, mother, I made up my mind that I would bring her right straight home, and that Edith would be decent to her. You can see that Edith does not intend to be."