says he
can't move. We ought to stay."

"If you want to go, I'll stay and let you know what happens," offered
Russ. "I don't mind."

"Perhaps that would be best," said Ruth.

"All right," agreed Alice, and she and her sister, with a last look at
the crowd around the ambulance, started for their apartment.

Russ came along a little later.

"What happened?" asked Ruth, when he had knocked on the door of their
hall and had been admitted.

"Not much," he replied. "They took Merley home, instead of to a
hospital. He wouldn't go to an institution, he said."

"Did those other two men go with him?" asked Alice.

"Who, Fripp and Jagle? No, they wouldn't be allowed to ride on the
ambulance. But they got a taxicab and went off in that. I heard Jagle
say to the ambulance surgeon, that he was a doctor, and that he'd attend
his friend when he got him home."

"Is Jagle a doctor?" asked Alice. "He didn't look like one."

"He's a _sort_ of doctor," Russ replied. "I think he's a quack, myself.
I wouldn't have him for a sick cat. But he calls himself a doctor and
surgeon. So that's all that happened."

"It was enough, anyhow," remarked Ruth. "I don't like to see anybody
hurt."

"I'm not so sure that fellow _was_ hurt," said Russ, slowly.

"What do you mean?" Alice asked, curiously.

"Well, he might have _imagined_ he was. I guess he was pretty well
scared at seeing that car come down on him. But I watched when he was
put in the ambulance and he seemed as well as either of his friends.
Only he kept insisting that he could not walk."

"It was certainly a queer accident," said Alice. "But, in spite of the
fact that he is a bad man, and wants to make trouble for daddy, I hope
he isn't seriously hurt."

"I don't believe it is serious," said Russ. "But it might easily have
been, though, if he had fallen in front of the car instead of away from
it."

"Well, there is nothing that hasn't its good side," remarked Ruth.
"Emerson's idea of the law of compensation works out very nicely in this
case."

"Kindly translate, sister mine," invited Alice, laughingly.

"Why, you know Emerson holds that one advantage makes up for each
defect. In this case Merley has had an accident--a defect. That may
cause him to stop annoying daddy--a distinct advantage to us."

"Oh, Ruth, how queer you are!" exclaimed Alice with a laugh. "I never
heard of such an idea."

"Who was this Emerson--a moving picture fellow?" asked Russ.

"No, he was