right to run away," he declared, brazenly.

But in this burst of bravado he had taken too little account of his
attire. He recalled it now, for the frosty gray eyes of Juliana ran
about him and came to rest upon his own eyes. For the taut moment that
he braved her glance it unaccountably seemed to him that the forbidding
mouth of the woman twitched nervously into the beginning of a smile. It
was a fleeting effect, but it did seem as if she had almost laughed,
then caught herself. And there was a tremolo defect in the organ tone
with which she now again demanded in blistering politeness, "May I ask
what this means?"

The quick-thinking Merle twin had by now devised an exit from any
complicity in whatever was meant. He saw his way out. He spoke up
brightly and with no shadow of guilt upon his fair young face.

"I told her it was wrong for the young to smoke; it stunts their growth
and leads to evil companions. But she wouldn't listen to me."

There was a nice regret in his tone.

Miss Juliana ignored him.

"Patricia!" she said, terribly.

But the late Ben Blunt, after the first devastating shock, had been
recovering vitality for this ordeal.

"I don't care!" she announced. "I'll run away if I want to!" And again,
bitterly, "I don't care!"

"Run away!"

Juliana fairly bayed the words. She made running away seem to be
something nice people never, never did.

"I don't care!" repeated the fugitive, dully.

There was a finality about it that gave Juliana pause. She had expected
a crumpling, but the offender did not crumple. It seemed another tack
must be taken.

"Indeed?" she inquired, almost cooingly. "And may I ask if this absurd
young creature was to accompany you on your--your travels?" She
indicated the gowned Wilbur, who would then have gone joyously to his
reward, even as had Jonas Whipple. His look of dumb suffering would have
stayed a judge less conscientious. "I presume this is some young lady of
your acquaintance--one of your little girl friends," she continued,
though it was plain to all that she presumed nothing of the sort.

"He is not!" The look of dumb suffering had stoutened one heart to new
courage. "He's a very nice little boy, and he gave me these ragged
clothes to run away in, and now he'll have to wear his Sunday clothes.
And you know he's a boy as well as I do!"

"She made him take a lot of money for it," broke in the Merle twin. "I
was afraid she wasn't doing right, but she wouldn't l