to Jane that there was furious accusation
in the small, red countenance. "_Don't_ shriek at me like that," she
said, indignantly. "I'm not taking your mother away from you,--I'm
trying to keep her for you!"

The door opened and Michael Daragh came in, his face glowing. "From the
look she had on her when she flew by," he said, "I'm thinking you've
surely won where the rest of us lost."

"I think she's going to tell him," said Jane, soberly.

"Glory be!" he said, fervently.

Jane sighed. "She's going to tell him, in the garish daylight, at the
Gent's Furnishing counter. If she can! But she's left me with the
'heart-scald'!"

Michael Daragh had picked up Billiken at once and at once she had ceased
to roar and soothed to a whimpering cry. "Hush, now _acushla_," he said,
"hush now,--let you be still, _solis na suile_!" The baby stopped
altogether, her ear intrigued by the purling Gaelic. "If you'll be
slipping out now, the way she won't be noticing, I'll have her fine and
fast asleep in two flips of a dead lamb's tail!"

Jane slipped out obediently and stepped softly down the precipitate
stair. The matron looked up, her lips thinly compressed.

"Mr. Daragh thinks you have persuaded her to tell."

"I can't be sure. I think she meant to tell him when she left here."

"Well, I guess she'll change her mind by the time she gets to the store.
She's very weak, Ethel is."

"But there isn't anything weak about the way she cares for the Jerry
person."

Mrs. Richards' lips tightened to a taut line. "When they get mad crazy
about a man" (the plural pronoun pigeonholed Ethel in a class) "they're
like the Rock of Gibraltar."

"I'd like to stay the rest of the afternoon, if you don't mind," said
Jane, at her winningest. "That is, if there's something I can do?" She
looked at the littered table.

"How'd you like to cut out the paper joy-bells?" The matron melted a
little. "A lady brought in the paper and the pattern yesterday, but I
haven't had time to get the girls at them yet."

"But--that's magenta-colored!" Jane picked up a sheet of the paper.

"Well, I guess it isn't the regular Christmas shade, but I don't know
that it matters, particularly. I expect it was some she had in the house.
You might put the girls at cutting them out and you could do the Merry
Christmas sign." She gave her a long and narrow placard in mustard green
and shook out some pattern letters from an envelope. Then she rang a firm
and authoritative