while you were suffering
so."

"I'm more unfeeling then than you are, for I could."

She insisted on having her way, and then tore up her handkerchief to
supply a soft linen bandage.

"You're extravagant, Alida," but she only shook her head.

"Famous! That feels better. What a touch you have! Now, if you had a
broken head, my fingers would be like a pair of tongs."

She only shook her head and smiled.

"You're as bad as Jane used to be. She never said a word when she
could shake or nod her meaning."

"I should think you would be glad, after having been half talked to
death by her mother."

"As I said before, take your own way of doing things. It seems the
right way after it is done."

A faint color came into her face, and she looked positively happy as
she sat down to breakfast. "Are you sure your head feels better?" she
asked.

"Yes, and you look a hundred per cent better. Well, I AM glad you had
such a good sleep after all the hubbub."

"I didn't sleep till toward morning," she said, with downcast eyes.

"Pshaw! That's too bad. Well, no matter, you look like a different
person from what you did when I first saw you. You've been growing
younger every day."

Her face flushed like a girl's under his direct, admiring gaze, making
her all the more pretty. She hastened to divert direct attention from
herself by asking, "You haven't heard from anyone this morning?"

"No, but I guess the doctor has. Some of those fellows will have to
keep shady for a while."

As they were finishing breakfast, Holcroft looked out of the open
kitchen door and exclaimed, "By thunder! We're going to hear from some
of them now. Here comes Mrs. Weeks, the mother of the fellow who hit
me."

"Won't you please receive her in the parlor?"

"Yes, she won't stay long, you may be sure. I'm going to give that
Weeks tribe one lesson and pay off the whole score."

He merely bowed coldly to Mrs. Weeks' salutation and offered her a
chair. The poor woman took out her handkerchief and began to mop her
eyes, but Holcroft was steeled against her, not so much on account of
the wound inflicted by her son as for the reason that he saw in her an
accomplice with her husband in the fraud of Mrs. Mumpson.

"I hope you're not badly hurt," she began.

"It might be worse."

"Oh, Mr. Holcroft!" she broke out sobbingly, "spare my son. It would
kill me if you sent him to prison."

"He took the chance of killing me last night," was