a question.

"How old air you, Molly Casey?"

The girl turned, her eyes blank, her manner charged with indifference
that unbent to be polite.

"Fifteen." And she went out.

"H'm," said Miranda Bailey, "fifteen. Worse'n I imagined."

Sandy's eyebrows went up. The breath that carried his words might have
come from a refrigerator.

"You goin' back in the flivver?" he asked, "or was you aimin' to keep
a-lookin' fo' that red-an'-white heifer?"

Miranda sniffed.

"I'm goin', soon's as I've said somethin' in the way of a word of advice
an' warnin', seein' as how I happened this way. It's a woman's matter or
I wouldn't meddle. But, what with talk goin' round Hereford in
settin'-rooms, in restyrongs, in kitchens, as well as in dance-halls an'
gamblin' hells where they sell moonshine, it's time it was carried to
you which is most concerned, I take it, for the good of the child, not
to mention yore own repitashuns."

"Where was it _you_ heard it, ma'am?" asked Sam politely.

"Where you never would, Mister Soda-Water Sam-u-el Manning," she
flashed. "In the parlor of the Baptis' Church. I ain't much time an' I
ain't goin' to waste it to mince matters. Here's a gel, a'most a woman,
livin' with you three bachelor men."

"I've been married," ventured Mormon.

"So I understand. Where's yore wife?"

"One of 'em's dead, one of 'em's divorced an' I don't rightly sabe where
the third is, nor I ain't losin' weight concernin' that neither."

"More shame to you. You're one of these women-haters, I s'pose?"

"No m'm, I ain't. That's been my trouble. I admire the sex but I've been
a bad picker. I'm jest a woman-dodger."

Miranda's sniff turned into a snort.

"I ain't heard nothin' much ag'in' you men, I'll say that," she
conceded. "I reckon you-all think I've jest come hornin' in on what
ain't my affair. Mebbe that's so. If you've figgered this out same way I
have, tell me an' I'll admit I'm jest an extry an' beg yore pardons."

"Miss Bailey," said Sandy, his manner changed to courtesy, "I believe
you've come here to do us a service--an' Molly likewise. So fur's I sabe
there's been some remahks passed concernin' her stayin' here 'thout a
chaperon, so to speak. Any one that 'ud staht that sort of talk is a
blood relation to a centipede an' mebbe I can give a guess as to who it
is. I reckon I can persuade him to quit."

"Mebbe, but you can't stop what's started any more'n a horn-toad can
stop a landslide, Sandy Bourke. You