Augusta put her arm out blindly to the wall and leaned against it. "Go, Jimmie, quick," she moaned. "She'd never come back for me. She'd only run faster and farther. She's running away--Running away from _me_." Wardwell hurried down the stairs, and Augusta leaning over the railing heard him as he caught up with her mother on the lower landing. "Surely," she heard him arguing genially, "you're not going out this kind of a night! It's going to rain cats and dogs in another five minutes." "I can't stay here." The girl heard the hurried whisper. "It's that girl. They've set her here to watch me." "No such thing!" Wardwell contended. "She's here--" His voice suddenly dropped to a whisper which Augusta could not understand. She listened with painful tenseness, but she could distinguish no words. After a little, however, she knew that Jimmie's talk was more steady--almost continuous; while her mother's whispers became hesitating and infrequent. Jimmie was winning. Augusta knew just what he was doing. He was telling one prodigous and consequential lie after another, until the poor fumbling mind with which he was contending should be completely turned around and would give in to his bidding like a bewildered child. She choked and almost cried aloud, for the pity of it, though she knew that Jimmie was doing the only thing possible. Then her mind wandered for a moment to another thought, and for an instant she trembled in a cold grip of fear. Would Jimmie ever, for any reason, find it necessary to use his--facility--upon herself. At last she heard her mother laugh. Jimmie had won! She ran quickly into her mother's sitting room and into the bedroom, shutting the door softly behind her. Then she went on into her own little room, which was fitted into a jutting corner of the building, and threw herself down on the bed. She did not know what she was going to do, but ever since Jimmie had said that, about her mother going away and leaving her a little girl, an idea had been crowding into her mind. She heard her mother and Wardwell at the hall door and heard her mother inviting Jimmie into the sitting room for a little chat. Wardwell had always been a favorite with her mother, and she spoke in just the friendly, kindly way she would have spoken in the old days. Then she heard her mother come into the big bedroom, probably to put down her hat and shawl. When Rose Wilding had gone out and shut the bedroom door, Augusta thought and acted quickly. She drew from under her own bed the little old cot on which she had slept until she was a big girl. Carrying it out into the big room she carefully set it up at the foot of her mother's bed, where it had stood until Augusta had come to the dignity of a room of her own. Then, bringing bedding for it and fixing it in the old way, she undressed quickly and curled herself into it.