was no time to put the light out. The young man dropped behind the foot of the bed, the door swung open and a red-haired man stepped into the room.
"Suffering cats!" he exclaimed.
"Go out immediately!" I said, pointing to the door. Tish was unwinding herself from the counterpane. She took it off airily and fling it over the foot of the bed, so that it covered the young man. It looked abandoned, but the necessity was terrible. As Tish said afterward, fifty years of respectable living would not have prevented the tongue of scandal licking up such a spicy morsel as that compromising situation.
The red-haired man retreated a step or two, opened the door part way, and went out and looked at the number. Then he came in again.
"Madam—ladies," he said, "this room belongs to me. There must be some mistake."
"I don't believe it belongs to you," Tish snapped. "Why haven't you got some brushes pn the dresser?"
"If you were a gentleman," Aggie wailed from the cot, "you would go out and let us get to sleep. I never put in such a night. First the other room is too hot, and we crawl over the transom to get a cool place, and then—"
"Over the transom," said the red-haired gentleman. "Do you mean to say—" Then he laughed a little and spoke over his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Lewis," he said, "but my room's taken."
"Kismet," said our Mr. Lewis' voice, but it sounded reckless and strained. "Fate has crooked her finger; I'm going home."
'Don't be an ass," said the red-haired gentleman. "These women in here came over the transom from the next room. It's empty."
"Good gracious!" Aggie gasped. "I left my forms hanging to the gas-jet!"
The red-haired man backed into the hall, but he still held the door.
"I'm going home," said our Mr. Lewis again. "I'm sick of things around here, anyhow. I've got a chance to get an oriange grove cheap in California."
"Fiddlesticks!" retorted the red-haired man, "Why don't you stick by the plum tree here at home?"
On that the door closed, and we could hear them talking guardedly in the hall.
"The wretches!" Tish fumed. "Oh, why haven't women the vote? I tell you"—she fixed Aggie and me with a gesture—"the day of conscience is coming. Women stand for civic purity, for the home, for right against might!"
It was the "right against might" that we repeated to her afterward, when we had stolen—but that is coming soon.
"But he loves the girl," 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
