ld Man Hatton!

She looked up at him, terror and relief in her face. He peered over
his glasses at her. "Who is it?" Tessie had not known, somehow, that
his face was so kindly.

Tessie's carefully planned story crumbled into nothingness. "It's me!"
she whimpered. "It's me!"

He reached out and put a hand on her arm and drew her inside.

"Angie! Angie! Here's a poor little kid----"

Tessie clutched frantically at the last crumbs of her pride. She tried
to straighten, to smile with her old bravado. What was that story she
had planned to tell?

"Who is it, Dad? Who----?" Angie Hatton came into the hallway. She
stared at Tessie. Then: "Why, my dear!" she said. "My dear! Come in
here."

Angie Hatton! Tessie began to cry weakly, her face buried in Angie
Hatton's expensive shoulder. Tessie remembered later that she had felt
no surprise at the act.

"There, there!" Angie Hatton was saying. "Just poke up the fire, Dad.
And get something from the dining room. Oh, I don't know. To drink,
you know. Something----"

Then Old Man Hatton stood over her, holding a small glass to her lips.
Tessie drank it obediently, made a wry little face, coughed, wiped her
eyes, and sat up. She looked from one to the other, like a trapped
little animal. She put a hand to her tousled head.

"That's all right," Angie Hatton assured her. "You can fix it after a
while."

There they were, the three of them: Old Man Hatton with his back to
the fire, looking benignly down upon her; Angie seated, with some
knitting in her hands, as if entertaining bedraggled, tear-stained
young ladies at dusk were an everyday occurrence; Tessie, twisting her
handkerchief in a torment of embarrassment. But they asked no
questions, these two. They evinced no curiosity about this disheveled
creature who had flung herself in upon their decent solitude.

Tessie stared at the fire. She looked up at Old Man Hatton's face and
opened her lips. She looked down and shut them again. Then she flashed
a quick look at Angie, to see if she could detect there some suspicion,
some disdain. None. Angie Hatton looked--well, Tessie put it to
herself, thus: "She looks like she'd cried till she couldn't cry no
more--only inside."

And then, surprisingly, Tessie began to talk. "I wouldn't never have
gone with this fella, only Chuck, he was gone. All the boys're gone.
It's fierce. You get scared, sitting home, waiting, and they're in
France and ever