She was speaking with dignity, and Jeffrey laughed and unclasped his hands to pat her on the arm. "I wonder why it makes you so mad to have me call him Weedie." She answered rather hotly, for her. "You wouldn't do it, any of you, if you weren't disparaging him." "Oh, we might. Out of affection. Weedie! good old Weedie! can't you hear us saying that?" "No, I can't. You wouldn't say it that way. Don't chaff me, Jeff. What do they say now--'jolly' me? Don't do that." Again Jeffrey gave her a light touch of affectionate intimacy. "What is it?" said he. "What do you want me to do?" "I want you to let Weedon Moore talk to people who are more ignorant than the rest of us, and tell them things they ought to know. About the country, about everything." "You don't want me to spoil Weedie's game." "It isn't a game, Jeff. That young man is giving up his time, and with the purest motives, to fitting our foreign population for the duties of citizenship. He doesn't disturb the public peace. He takes the men away after their day's work--" "Under cover of the dark." "He doesn't run any risk of annoying people by assembling in the streets." "Weedie doesn't want any decent man to know his game, whatever his game is." "I won't answer that, Jeffrey. But I feel bound to say you are ungenerous. You've an old grudge against Weedon Moore. You all have, all you boys who were brought up with him. So you break up the meeting." "Now, see here, Amabel," said Jeff, "we haven't a grudge against him. Anyhow, leave me out. Take a fellow like Alston Choate. If he's got a grudge against Moore, doesn't it mean something?" "You hated him when you were boys," said Amabel. "Those things last. Nothing is so hard to kill as prejudice." "As to the other night," said Jeffrey, "I give you my word it was as great a surprise to me as it was to Moore. I hadn't the slightest intention of breaking up the meeting." "Yet you went there and you took that impossible Martha Beattie with you--" "Patricia, not Martha." "I have nothing to do with names she assumed for the stage. She was Martha Shepherd when she lived in Addington. No doubt she is entitled to be called Beattie; but Martha is her Christian name." "Now you're malicious yourself," said Jeff, enjoying the human warmth of her. "I never knew you to be so hateful. Why can't you live and let live? If I'm to let your Weedie alone, can't you keep your hands off poor old Madame Beattie?" Miss Amabel turned upon him a look where just reproof struggled with wounded pride. "Jeffrey, I didn't think you'd be insincere with me." "Hang it, Amabel, I'm not. You're one of the few unbroken idols I've got. Sterling down to the toes. Didn't you know it?" "And yet you did take Madame Beattie to Moore's rally." "Rally? So that's what he calls it."