o back,
if it wasn't for her--he said so. He'd rather go to jail than face
her. Why, if I thought for a minute that you'd take that stand, I
never would have told you, Kate! Don't you _dare_--" Then Marion
dropped a saucer that she was wiping, and when her consternation over
the mishap had subsided she awoke to the fact that Kate had dropped
the subject also and had gone to read her limp little _Sonnets from
the Portuguese_, that Marion never could see any sense in.

Marion must have had a remarkably trustful nature, else she would have
been suspicious. Kate was not paying any attention to what she read.
She was mentally rounding periods and coining new phrases of sympathy
that should not humiliate but draw close to the writer the soul of
Mrs. Singleton Corey when she read them. She was planning the letter
she fully intended to write. Later that evening, when Marion was
curled up in bed with a book that held her oblivious to unobtrusive
deeds, such as letter-writing, Kate put the phrases and the carefully
constructed sentences upon a sheet of her thickest, creamiest
stationery. She did not feel in the slightest degree disloyal to
Marion or to Jack. Hot-headed, selfish children, what did they know
about the deeper problems of life? Of course his mother must be told.
And of course, Kate was the person who could best write so difficult a
letter. So she wrote it, and explained just how she came to know about
Jack. But the professor was a conscientious man. He believed that the
authorities should be notified at once. Jack Corey was a fugitive from
the law, and to conceal the knowledge of his whereabouts would be
nothing short of compounding a felony. It was thoughtful to write his
mother, of course. But duty demanded that the chief of police in Los
Angeles should be notified also, and as speedily as possible. By
George, the case warranted telegraphing the news!

Now, it was one thing to write sympathetically to a social leader that
her wayward son has been found, but it is quite another thing to turn
the wayward son over to the police. Kate had not considered the moral
uprightness of the professor when she showed him the letter, but she
managed the difficulty very nicely. She pleaded a little, and
flattered a little, and cried a good deal, and finally persuaded the
professor's conscience to compound a felony to the extent of writing
Fred instead of wiring the chief of police. Fred could notify the
authorities if he chose--