The Law-Breakers and Other Stories | Page 8

stared at her. "You are taking this seriously with a
vengeance!"
"I must."
He crossed the room and, bending beside her, sought to take her hand.
"Do you mean that but for this--? Mary, are you going to let a little
thing like this separate us?"
He had captured her fingers, but they lay limp and unresponsive in his.
"It is not a little thing; from my standpoint it is everything."
"But you will give me another chance?"
"You have had your chance. That was it. I was trying to find out
whether I loved you, and now I know that I do not. I could never marry
a man I could not--er--trust."

"Trust?" I swear to you that I am worthy of trust."
She smiled sadly and drew away her hand. "Maybe. But I shall never
know, you see, because I do not love you."
Her feminine inversion of logic increased his dismay. "I shall never
give up," he exclaimed, rising and buttoning his coat. "When you think
this over you will realize that you have exaggerated what I did."
She shook her head. His obduracy made no impression on her, for she
was free from doubts.
"We will be friends, if you like; but we can never be anything closer."
An inspiration seized him. "What would the girl whom Jim Daly loves,
if there is one, say? She has never given him up, I wager."
Mary blushed at his unconscious divination. "I do not know," she said.
"But you are one person, Jim Daly is another. You have had every
advantage; he is a--er--blatherskite. Yet you condescend to put yourself
on a par with him, and condone the offence on the ground that your
little world winks at it. Remember
"'Spirits are not finely touched But to fine issues.'
How shall society progress, unless my sex insists on at least that patent
of nobility in the men who woo us? I am reading you a lecture, but you
insisted on it."
George stood for a moment silent. "You are right, I suppose." He lifted
her hand to his lips and kissed it. Then he turned and left the room.
As he passed out, Mary heard the voices of the orphans, Joe and Frank,
in the entry. The former in greeting her held out a letter which had just
been delivered by the postman.
"You've come back, Miss Wellington," cried the little boy rapturously.
"Yes, Joe dear."

Mechanically she opened the envelope. As she read the contents she
smiled faintly and nodded her head as much as to say that the news was
not unexpected.
"But noblesse oblige," she murmured to herself proudly, not realizing
that she had spoken aloud.
"What did you say, Miss Wellington?"
Mary recalled her musing wits. "I've something interesting to tell you,
boys. Miss Burke is going to be married to Jim Daly. That is bad for
you, dears, but partly to make up for it, I wish to let you know that
there is no danger of my leaving you any more."

AGAINST HIS JUDGMENT
Three days had passed, and the excitement in the neighborhood was
nearly at an end. The apothecary's shop at the corner into which John
Baker's body and the living four-year-old child had been carried
together immediately after the catastrophe had lost most of its interest
for the curious, although the noses of a few idlers were still pressed
against the large pane in apparent search of something beyond the
brilliant colored bottles or the soda-water fountains. Now that the
funeral was over, the womenkind, whose windows commanded a view
of the house where the dead man had been lying, had taken their heads
in and resumed their sweeping and washing, and knots of their
husbands and fathers no longer stood in gaping conclave close to the
very doorsill, rehearsing again and again the details of the distressing
incident. Even the little child who had been so miraculously saved from
the jaws of death, although still decked in the dirty finery which its
mother deemed appropriate to its having suddenly become a public
character, had ceased to be the recipient of the dimes of the
tender-hearted. Such is the capriciousness of the human temperament at
times of emotional excitement, the plan of a subscription for the
victim's family had not been mooted until what was to its parents a
small fortune had been bestowed on the rescued child; but the scale of

justice had gradually righted itself. Contributions were now pouring in,
especially since it was reported that the mayor and several other
well-known persons had headed the list with fifty dollars each; and
there was reason to believe that a lump sum of from fifteen hundred to
two thousand dollars would be collected for the benefit of the widow
and