her brother outside, cursing his
luck with his key as usual.

She flung the door open, and confronted him with another man, who had
his arms around him as if he had caught him from falling with the inward
pull of the door. Alan got to his feet and grappled with the man, and
insisted that he should come in and make a night of it.

Bessie saw that it was Jeff, and they stood a moment, looking at each
other. Jeff tried to free himself with an appeal to Bessie: "I beg your
pardon, Miss Lynde. I walked home with your brother, and I was just
helping him to get in--I didn't think that you--"

Alan said, with his measured distinctness: "Nobody cares what you think.
Come in, and get something to carry you over the bridge. Cambridge cars
stopped running long ago. I say you shall!" He began to raise his voice.
A light flashed in a window across the way, and a sash was lifted; some
one must be looking out.

"Oh, come in with him!" Bessie implored, and at a little yielding in
Jeff her brother added:

"Come in, you damn jay!" He pulled at Jeff.

Jeff made haste to shut the door behind them. He was laughing; and if it
was from mere brute insensibility to what would have shocked another in
the situation, his frank recognition of its grotesqueness was of better
effect than any hopeless effort to ignore it would have been. People
adjust themselves to their trials; it is the pretence of the witness
that there is no trial which hurts, and Bessie was not wounded by Jeff's
laugh.

"There's a fire here in the reception-room," she said. "Can you get him
in?"

"I guess so."

Jeff lifted Alan into the room and stayed him on foot there, while he
took off his hat and overcoat, and then he let him sink into the low
easy-chair Bessie had just risen from. All the time, Alan was
bidding her ring and have some champagne and cold meat set out on the
side-board, and she was lightly promising and coaxing. But he drowsed
quickly in the warmth, and the last demand for supper died half uttered
on his lips.

Jeff asked across him: "Can't I get him up-stairs for you? I can carry
him."

She shook her head and whispered back, "I can leave him here," and
she looked at Jeff with a moment's hesitation. "Did you--do you think
that--any one noticed him at Mrs. Enderby's?"

"No; they had got him in a room by himself--the caterer's men had."

"And you found him there?"

"Mr. Westover found him there," Jeff answered.

"I don't understand."

"Didn