said Aggie, beginning to sniffle. "I—I think as much of ci—civic purity as you do, Tish Carberry, but I th—think he is just p—pig-headed."
"The girl's a fool and so are you," said Tish, beginning to take the counterpane off the reporter. And at that second there was a knock and the red-haired man opened the door again.
"I beg your pardon," he apologized, "but will you give me the key to the other room?"
We did. Aggie unlocked the connecting door and brought back the key to our old room and the things she had left on the gas-jet. In the excitement she threw the key on the dresser and was just about to reach the other articles through the crack in the door when Tish caught her arm.
Chapter VI.
A Bribe and a Bride and It's All Over
Now I am not defending what followed. But the Lewis man had been nice to us, and, as Tish said tartly to Charlie Sands, women who had lived in single blessedness as long as we had, learned to think quick and act quicker. As to the law, we sent a check to the farmer whose pig we killed—and with pork at its present price it was ruinous, although we were glad it had not been a cow; and as to using our missionary money to make up for the packet Aggie lost—as we said, we considered that it had been used in missionary work. It was hardest, of course, on the Morning Star reporter. Only a week or so ago we had to go to Noblestown to get a new handle for the meat-chopper. We were in the machine outside the store, and when we saw him it was too late. Tish was wearing his necktie—having gathered it up with her clothes that awful night, and not knowing his name she could not send it back to him—and she clapped her hand over it. But he saw it.
"Good afternoon," he said, grinning.
"What do you mean by addressing us?" Tish demanded, trying to pull the collar of her duster over the tie.
"You don't mean to say you've forgotten me already!" he exclaimed, looking grieved. "Don't you remember—your—our room at the Sherman House?"
"Certainly not," Tish said haughtily.
He pulled out a card and scribbled something on it. "My card," he said. He leaned over from the curb and gave it to Tish.
"Don't bother about the tie," he said. "I never liked it anyhow. But—I lost a scarf pin that night. I—I suppose you don't know anything about it?"
Out of the comer of her eye Tish saw Aggie make a clutch at her neck, and she threw her a warning glance.
"I am afraid you have made a mistake," she said stiffly, and just then the hardware man brought out the handle. Tish was so excited that she started the car without paying for it, and when we looked back he and the reporter were staring after us; and the reporter distinctly said, "Those women will be wealthy some day."
"Why didn't you let me give him his pin?" Aggie demanded when we were safely out of sight. "I—I feel like a thief."
"Fiddle! And confess?" said Tish. "We'll send it to him. I've got his card."
But all he had written on it, after all, was, "A. Dresser. Private Bureau." Charlie Sands has promised to return the pin.
Well, all this time I have left the three of us huddled in our nightgowns on the side of the bed, with sheets draped over us, and the Morning Star gentleman with his ear to the connecting door and taking down every word that was said, in shorthand. Robertson was offering the girl, and enough money for Mr. Lewis to marry on, for his vote on something or other. I reckon the balance between a man's honor and his cupidity hangs pretty even anyhow, and when you throw a girl to one side or the other it swings the scale. The Lewis man was yielding and Tish was breathing hard.
"The hussy!" she muttered.
"Did you notice how pretty her hair was in the sunlight?" whispered Aggie.
Somehow it came over me then how young the girl was, and what kind of moral sense could one expect of a girl with that red-headed scamp for a father?
Strangely enough, the plot was gentle Aggie's. Aggie is like baking powder—she rises when she gets heated up. And she was mad clear through. We had no trouble gathering our clothes in our arms, although I could not find my shoe, which Tish had thrown at the bureau. Then we sat and waited. At the last minute Aggie got a little weak and wanted blackberry wine, but I had nothing in the satchel but arnica.
All we intended to do was to get the yellow notebook—to meet strategy with strategy. The rest, while unexpected, followed naturally. But when I look out the window from my desk and see Aggie's placid face, and Tish's austere Methodist profile, it is difficult to associate them or myself with the three partly dressed creatures who— But to go back.
We had locked the door into the hall and each of us had her clothes. When the two men in the next room went out Mr. Morning Star turned to us with a chuckle.
"Thanks for your forbearance, ladies," he said, "we've got that villain Robertson where he ought to have been a dozen years ago. And as for Lewis—" He shut his notebook with a bang, and there was something in his face besides exultation. "To buy a girl like that I" he said—and I knew. He wanted the girl himself.
Aggie was to ask to see the notebook and then toss it over the transom into the corridor. While the reporter was trying to get out the locked door into the hall we could escape into the adjoining room, lock the connecting door, walk around easily and get the notebook, and then make our escape comfortably.
It would have been all right, but Aggie can not throw. The first attempt failed by seven feet. The young man was so astonished, however, that he stood with his mouth open, and the second trial sent it through.
"What in the name of Heaven did you do that for?" he demanded, thinking Aggie had suddenly gone mad. Then he rushed to the door. It was locked and I had the key! We were all in the next room and a bolted door between us before he realized what had happened.
We had expected, of course, to get the notebook, to dress, and to leave in the machine quietly, but from that time on there was no time to think of the conventions. The young man began to hammer on the door and other doors opened along the hall. Then a bell-boy came up and ran off in a hurry for a key. I saw Tish putting on her ulster over her petticoat, and Aggie and I did the same. The next thing we knew we were down in the empty lobby, and Tish had forgotten the spark plugs!
We got started finally with a steel hairpin , for a plug, and as we moved away I heard the chase coming down the stairs after us. They were howling "Stop thief!" We were hardly well under way when the bell-boy came in sight with the bureau man at his heels and a collection of people in all sorts of costumes following.
Tish says we did forty miles an hour going down the main street. I should have guessed more than that. I had a fearful exaltation: Aggie had advanced her speed limit since morning from four miles an hour to the capacity of the engine, and kept bawling to Tish a phrase she had caught from Charlie Sands.
"Tetter out!" she cried,, over and over. "Letter out!"
We stopped on a quiet side street and listened, but there was no noise of pursuit. Tish got out and stuck her wet finger on the hood, but it wasn't boiling.
"There's nothing coming," she said. "I'm going to stop long
