"Oh, yes," Fred agreed, carelessly, "Uncle William will have a fit, of course. But I'll bet on Howard! Mother will almost die of it, I'm afraid," she said, her face sobering; "I'm sorry about that. But, of course, Laura, that's the penalty of progress. We--you and I and Howard--are moving the world, and the old people have got to get out of the way or get run over!" Laura was silent. "The thing that hits me hardest," said Frederica, "is the way women won't stand together. Every one of those girls took to their heels." "Oh, _when_ will Howard come?" said Laura, with a sobbing breath. She was not sorry she had stood by Fred when all the rest of them "took to their heels," only--"I'll die if he doesn't come soon!" she thought, shaking very much. Once she glanced over her shoulder at Frederica, who was straining her eyes (the cell was lighted only from the hall) over her note-book, and she felt a faint thrill of admiration. Imagine, making notes at such a moment! The afternoon passed; hours--hours--hours. "Oh, when will somebody come?" Laura said, in a whisper. Frederica had put up her note-book, and seemed absorbed in thought. Catalina was asleep. There came a sound of voices in the outer court, and again Laura clutched at the iron bars. (She had been at the grating ever since the lock was turned upon them.) "It's Howard!" Even Fred was moved to stand up and peer out into the whitewashed corridor--then both girls shrank back; a drunken negress was being pulled along over the flagstones of the passage to the receiving-room; a few minutes later, she was pulled back again, and they heard the clang of a cell door; then yells, then evidently sickness; then cries upon God and the devil, and a torrent of unspeakably vile invective. Even Fred quailed before it, and Laura clung to her in such a paroxysm of fear that they neither of them heard the hurrying feet outside on the flagging--then the lock was flung out, and Howard caught his wife in his arms. "I just got word," he said, hoarsely; "Weston caught me at the club. My darling!" The tears were in his eyes and his face was as white as Laura's. Behind him, Arthur Weston looked grimly over his head at Frederica. "I had to chase him all around town," he said, "or we'd have been here before. And it's taken time to bail you out." "I'm sorry to have bothered you," Fred said; "but it's been an awfully valuable experience to Laura and me. _I_ wouldn't have missed it for anything!" The matron, faintly interested, was standing by to see the end of it. "Them swells will learn something," she whispered, to her assistant; "I guess that thin one ain't bad. I thought she was. Well, good-by, ma'am," she said, listlessly; and went back to work on a piece of dingy embroidery until the next dumping of human rubbish should claim her attention. Out in the courtyard Frederica made a little delay. Where was Catalina to go? What was she to do? "Out on bail? Does that mean she's got to come back here again?"