ydam's case that interested me and Hildreth most ...
she was a dainty, pretty little slight thing, as Hildreth was--I could
judge by her pictures....

"Hildreth," I urged, "let's drop Mrs. Suydam a note encouraging her ...
she's probably without a friend in the world, she and her man ...
they're trying to oust her from her flat ... she's being hounded about."

"My God, Johnnie dear, let's _don't!_ ... they'll only give our letter
to the papers ... let's let well enough alone once more ... the grocer
boy passed me in the street to-day and didn't tip his hat to me."

* * * * *

I was sitting at Mrs. Rond's tea-table having afternoon tea with her.
She had sent one of her girls over to the cottage to tell me she wished
to see me "alone" ... "on a matter of great importance."

The cats, who had trailed her eldest daughter, Editha, across to our
place, followed us back again with sailing tails in the air.

Mrs. Rond poured me a cup of strong tea.

"Drink that first, then I'll give you a little information that won't
be so very agreeable to you."

The glimmer of satiric yet benevolent humour that was never long absent
from her eyes, lightened there again, as she rolled and lit a "Plowboy."

"Have you noticed a change in the weather? A storm is blowing up. I'm
speaking figuratively ... I might as well out with it, Johnnie,--there's
a report, growing in strength, that a mob of townspeople is scheduled to
come your way to-night, some time, and treat you to a serenade of
protest and the traditional yokel hospitality of mobs ... a coat of tar
and feathers and a ride on a rail beyond the town limits."

"So it's come to that, has it?"

"Johnnie, it isn't the townsfolk that started it ... of that I am
certain ... left alone, they would still have been content to mind their
business, and accept you and Hildreth on a friendly basis...."

She brought up the story of the strange men haranguing from street
corners again....

"It's the New York newspapers, or one or two of the most sensational of
them, that are back of this new phase."

"You mean, Mrs. Rond, that they would dare go so far as to instigate an
attack on me and Hildreth ... with possibly fatal results?"

"Of course they would ... they need more news ... they want something
more to happen ... to have all this uproar end tamely in happy,
permanent love--that's what they couldn't endure....

"Well," she resumed after a pause, "what