he to Miss
Bailey, "but I guess it's a case for the sergeant. Of course if that
hand satchel turns up it will be all right, but the case looks bad to
me. She ain't the first what took the quickest way out of things she
couldn't stand. I don't blame them myself, but that's the jury's
business. Mine is to take the girl along with me. Your thinking so much
of her will go a good ways to help her out. The patrol wagon is at the
door. We'll just be moseying along."

Gertie went with him without a word. Her escape from her grandfather's
vituperations seemed to make her oblivious to everything else. Miss
Bailey, however, was comforted by no such blindness. She realized that
tragedy, perhaps death, had come to Room 18, and she set about averting
them with characteristic energy.

The one frail thread upon which Gertie's life hung led to one or two
pawn shops whence purses, not hers, were reported. Then it snapped, and
a whole mountain of circumstantial evidence was piled up in readiness to
drop on her defenceless head when the days of the trial should come.
Constance Bailey had never been so close to tragedy before, and she bore
the juxtaposition very badly. She persisted in, and insisted upon
effort, after the police and the reporters had done their best and
worst. But always she was met, though never quite daunted, by the
challenge to produce the purse with the proofs of alibi.

Under these conditions it naturally occurred that the little First
Readers received but a very divided attention. Affairs of state in Room
18 were left largely to the board of monitors, and more than ever did it
seem desirable to Isidore Cohen to secure a portfolio within that
cabinet. For more than a week he had been ready to present his
application. The proof of his fitness for office was wrapped in a
newspaper under the decayed mattress upon which he slept. And he only
waited a propitious moment to lay it and his application before
Teacher. Her new habit of dashing away at the stroke of three had
hitherto interfered with his plan, but about a week after Gertie's
arrest he found courage to elude the janitor, and to make his way to
Room 18 at a quarter past eight in the morning.

And Miss Bailey arriving--pale, distraught, and heavy-eyed--at eight
twenty-five, found the lost purse lying upon her blotter, and Isidore
Cohen ready with the speech of presentation.

"Mine auntie," it began--he had never had an aunt--"she don't needs this
pocket-book n