The color deepened until even the velvety eyes seemed tinged with it. "I don't know. _He_ isn't exactly popular with Pop, either." Esme reached over and gave her friend a surreptitious little hug, which might have cost a crossing pedestrian his life if he hadn't been a brisk dodger. "Hugh Merritt is a _man_," said she in a low voice: "He's brave and he's straight and he's fine. And oh, Kathie, dearest, if a man of that kind loves you, don't you ever, ever let anything come between you." "Hello!" said Kathleen in surprise. "That don't sound much like the Great American Man-eating Pumess of yore. There's been a big change in you since you sidetracked Will Douglas, Esme. Did you really care? No, of course, you didn't," she answered herself. "He's a nice chap, but he isn't particularly brave or fine, I guess." A light broke in upon her: "Esme! Is it, after all--" "No, no, no, no, NO!" cried the victim of this highly feminine deduction, in panic. "It isn't any one." "No, of course it isn't, dear. I didn't mean to tease you. Hello! what have we here?" The car stopped with a jar on a side street, some distance from the quarantined section. Seated on the curb a woman was wailing over the stiffened form of a young child. The boy's teeth were clenched and his face darkly suffused. "Convulsions," said Esme. The two girls were out of the car simultaneously. The agonized mother, an Italian, was deaf to Esme's persuasions that the child be turned over to them. "What shall we do?" she asked, turning to Kathleen in dismay. "I think he's dying, and I can't make the woman listen." Something of her father's stern decisiveness of character was in Kathleen Pierce. "Don't be a fool!" she said briskly to the mother, and she plucked the child away from her. "Start the car, Esme." The woman began to shriek. A crowd gathered. O'Farrell providentially appeared from around a corner. "Grab her, you," she directed O'Farrell. The politician hesitated. "What's the game?" he began. Then he caught sight of Esme. "Oh, it's you, Miss Elliot. Sure. Hi! Can it!" he shouted, fending off the distracted mother. "They'll take the kid to the hospital. See? You go along quiet, now." Speeding beyond all laws, but under protection of their red cross, they all but ran down Dr. Merritt and stopped to take him in. He confirmed Esme's diagnosis. "It'll be touch and go whether we save him," said he. Esme carried the stricken child into the hospital ward. The two volunteers waited outside for word. In an hour it came. The boy would probably live, thanks to their promptitude. "But you ought not to be picking up chance infants around the district," he protested. "It isn't safe." "Oh, we belong to the St. Bernard tribe," retorted Miss Pierce. "We take 'em as we find 'em. Hugh, come and lunch with us." The grayish young man looked at her wistfully. "Haven't time," he said.