"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I didn't mean to insinuate----" "You did! You did! You stood up there and told me that my little girl who loves her mother ran away from home," Mrs. Sprockett cried, irrationally. "That's what you did! You stood up there----" "I'm sorry," interrupted John, moving from the room to avoid the outburst. He stepped out on the porch and found Mrs. Sprockett's husband, coatless and collarless as usual, with the same weary look about his eyes and the same hopeless droop of his narrow, rounded shoulders, mounting the steps. Across the street, in the Sprockett home, the baby wailed and fretted. "Beg pardon," began Mrs. Sprockett's husband. "I just thought----" "Yes, she's inside," said John, anticipating the inevitable question. Instead of moving on into the house Mrs. Sprockett's husband stood where he had stopped. "Our Alma----" he began. "If you want my advice," said John, interrupting again, "I would wait until morning if I were you and then ask the police to help you find her." No storm of protest came from Mrs. Sprockett's husband. The instinctive fraternalism of man between man caused him to signal, with a nod of his head, for John to come closer to him. With frequent apprehensive glances toward the door, he whispered: "Alma's not a bad girl, but she's been held down too much. She's only sixteen and she likes pretty things and picture shows and other things a girl of her age likes naturally. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if she's just picked up and left to go to work some place and have a little more freedom. She's not a bad girl, she's--she's--just a girl, that's all, and she wants to do what other girls do. But, of course, I want her back." John's sympathy swept away the anger that had surged through him when Mrs. Sprockett became irate. "I think you're right," he said, remembering how Alma had begged him to refrain from telling anyone that he had seen her leaving the picture show. "Don't say a word about what I've said to you, will you?" asked Mrs. Sprockett's husband, involuntarily shrinking away from the steps. "Never fear," John assured him, "and if I can help, let me know." "Thanks, I will, but Maud--well--you know how it is--you know--sometimes," said Mrs. Sprockett's husband. "I know," said John, and Sprockett hurried back across the street. A few minutes later the baby's wailing stopped. Mrs. Sprockett's husband appeared on the porch of the Sprockett house with a bundle of blankets in his arms and pacing back and forth, whistled a familiar tune as a lullaby. John listened and distinguished the notes of the father's whistling and smiled to himself as he recognized it as an off-key variation of "The Merry Widow Waltz." Mrs. Sprockett, still sobbing, and Mrs. Gallant, with her arm around her, emerged from the house. "I'm going to keep Mrs. Sprockett company until she can rest," Mrs. Gallant explained.