re," said Johnnie, in a scarcely audible
voice.

When Stoddard would have remonstrated, or asked why, his lips were
closed by sight of her daunted, miserable face. He knew as well as she
the mad imprudence of the thing which they had done, and blamed himself
roundly with it all.

"I'll not forget to bring the books we were talking of," he made haste
to say. He picked up the little basket from the floor of the car.

"You'd better keep the flowers in that," Johnnie told him lifelessly.
Her innocent dream was broken into by a cruel reality. She was
struggling blindly under the weight of all her little world's
disapprobation.

"You'll let me return the basket when I bring you the books," Gray
suggested, helplessly.

"I don't know," Johnnie hesitated. Then, as a sudden inspiration came to
her, "Mandy Meacham said she'd try to get me into a club for girls that
Miss Sessions has. She said Miss Sessions would lend me books. Maybe you
might just leave them with her. I'm sure I should be mighty proud to
have them. I know I'll love to read them; but--well, you might just
leave them with her."

A little satiric sparkle leaped to life in Stoddard's eyes. He looked at
the innocent, upraised face in wonder. The most experienced manoeuverer
of Society's legion could not have handled a difficult situation
more deftly.

"The very thing," he said cheerily. "I'll talk to Miss Sessions about it
to-morrow."

CHAPTER VIII

OF THE USE OF WINGS

"I told you I'd speak a good word for you," shouted Mandy Meacham,
putting her lips down close to Johnnie's ear where she struggled and
fought with her looms amid the deafening clamour of the weaving room.

The girl looked up, flushed, tired, but eagerly receptive.

"Yes," her red lips shaped the word to the other's eyes, though no sound
could make itself heard above that din except such eldritch shrieks
as Mandy's.

"I done it. I got you a invite to some doin's at the Uplift Club
a-Wednesday."

Again Johnnie nodded and shaped "Yes" with her lips. She added something
which might have been "thank you"; the adorable smile that accompanied
it said as much.

Mandy watched her, fascinated as the lithe, strong young figure bent and
strained to correct a crease in the web where it turned the roll.

"They never saw anything like you in their born days, I'll bet," she
yelled. "I never did. You're awful quare--but somehow I sorter like ye."
And she scuttled back to her looms as the room