"That's Peggy's chair," she said. "Peggy's me little daughter."

"Oh, that's nice," said Marjorie. "How old is she?"

"Just a young thing," said Mrs. O'Mara. "She'll be in in a minute."

Marjorie leaned back again, her tea consumed, and rested. She was not particularly interested in Peggy, because she was not very used to children. She liked special ones sometimes, but as a rule she did not quite know what to do with them. After a few sentences exchanged, and an embarra.s.sed embrace in which the children stiffened themselves, children and Marjorie were apt to melt apart. She hoped Peggy wouldn't be the kind that climbed on you and kicked you.

A wild clattering of feet aroused her from these half-drowsy meditations.

"Here's Francis, mother! Here's Francis!" called a joyous young voice, and Marjorie turned to see Francis, his eyes sparkling and his whole face lighted up, dashing into the room with an arm around one of the most beautiful girls she had ever seen, a tall, vivid creature who might have been any age from seventeen to twenty, and who brought into the room an atmosphere of excitement and gaiety like a wind.

"And here's Peggy!" said Francis gaily, pausing in his dash only when he reached Marjorie's side. "She's all grown up since I went away, and isn't she the dear of the world?"

"Oh, but so's your wife, Francis!" said Peggy navely, slipping her arm from around his shoulder and dropping on her knees beside Marjorie.

"You don't mind if I kiss you, do you, please? And must I call her Mrs. Ellison, Francis?"

"Peggy, child, where's your manners?" said her mother from the background reprovingly, but with an obvious note of pride in her voice.

"Where they always were," said Peggy boldly, laughing, and staying where she was.

She was tall and full-formed, with thick black hair like her mother's, not fluffy and waving like Marjorie's, but curling tight in rings wherever it had the chance. Her eyes were black and her cheeks and lips a deep permanent red. She looked the picture of health and strength, and Marjorie felt like a toy beside her--fragile to the breaking-point. She seemed much better educated than her mother, and evidently on a footing of perfect equality and affection with Francis.

Marjorie was drawn to her, for the girl had vitality and charm; but she found herself wondering why Francis had never told her about this Peggy, and why he had never thought of marrying her.

"You wouldn't think this young wretch was only sixteen, would you?"

said Francis, answering her silent question. "Look at her--long dresses and hair done up, and beaux, I hear, in all directions!"

Of course. If Peggy had been scarcely past fourteen when Francis saw her last, he couldn't have considered marrying her. Marjorie tried to think that she wished he had, but found that she did not like to cease owning anything that she had ever possessed, even such a belonging as Francis Ellison.

"That's very nice," she said inadequately, smiling at Peggy in as friendly a manner as so tired a person could manage. "I'm glad I shall have Peggy to be friends with while I'm up here."

"Oh, me dear, ye'll be up here forever an' the day after, be the looks of the job Mr. Francis has on his hands," said Mrs. O'Mara.

"No, I won't," she began to say hurriedly, and then stopped herself.

She had no right to tell any one about her bargain with Francis. She didn't want to, anyway.

"The poor child's tired," said Mrs. O'Mara, whom, in spite of her relation to Peggy, Marjorie was beginning to regard as a guardian angel. "Come upstairs to yer room, me dear."

Marjorie rose, with Francis and Peggy hovering about her, carrying wraps and hats and suitcases; and Mrs. O'Mara led the way to a room on the floor above, reached by a stair suspiciously like a ladder.

"Here ye'll be comfortable," said Mrs. O'Mara, "and rest a little till we have supper. Peggy will get you anything you want."

But Marjorie declined Peggy. All she wanted was to rest a little longer.

She flung herself on the softly mattressed cot in one corner of the room; and nearly went to sleep.

She was awakened--it must have been quite sleep--by Francis, on the threshold. His eyes were blazing, and he was evidently angry at her to the last degree--angrier even than he had been that time in the city when he nearly threw the telephone at her.

"Is this the sort of person you are?" he demanded furiously. "Look at this telegram!"

Marjorie, frightened, rose from the couch with her heart beating like a triphammer.

"Let me see," she asked.

He handed the telegram to her with an effect of wanting to shake her.

"Am coming up to arrange with you about Mrs. Ellison," it said. "Know all."

It was signed by Logan.

"Good heavens!" said Marjorie helplessly.

"Knows all!" said Francis bitterly. "And that's the sort of girl you are!"

CHAPTER V

Marjorie froze in consternation. She had forgotten to allow for Francis's gusts of anger; indeed, there had been no need, for since his one flare-up over the telephone he had been perfectly gentle and courteous to her.

She stared at him, amazed.

"But I didn't do anything to make that happen!" she protested. "I never dreamed--why, I'd have too much pride----"

"Pride!" thundered Francis. "It's plain cause and effect. You write to that pup in New York, and I give you the envelope and paper--help you straight through it, good heavens!--and you use my decency to appeal to him for help, after you've agreed to try it out and see it through!"

Marjorie stiffened with anger.

"I _was_ going to try it out and see it through," she countered with dignity. "But if you treat me this way I see no reason why I should.

Even this housekeeper of yours would give me money to escape with."

"Escape! You act as if you were in a melodrama!" said Francis angrily.

"We made a bargain, that's all there is to it; and the first chance you get, you smash it. I suppose that's the way women act. . . . I don't know much about women, I admit."

"You don't know much about me," said Marjorie icily, "if you jump to conclusions like that about me. Whatever that Logan man knows he doesn't know from me. Have you forgotten Lucille?"

"Lucille wouldn't----" began Francis, and stopped.

"And why wouldn't she? Didn't she tell me that I was a poor little pet, and that men could always take care of themselves and, then turn around and help you carry me away? And it was carrying me away--it was stealing me, as if I were one of those poor Sabine women in the history book."

They were fronting each other across the threshold all this time, Francis with his face rigid and pale with anger, his wife flushed and quivering.

"I admit I hadn't thought of that," said Francis, referring presumably to Lucille's possibilities as an informer, and not to Marjorie's being a Sabine woman.

Marjorie moved back wearily and sat on the bed.

"And you were just getting to be such a nice friend," she mourned. "I was getting so I _liked_ you. There never was anybody pleasanter than you while we were coming up from New York. Why, you weren't like a person one was married to, at all!"