n't_ mean to run away and leave her in the gutter.
I got rattled, and Brother was crying and I lost my head."

"That will save the 'Clarion,'" said Esme, with a deep breath.

Kathleen looked at her curiously, and then made a singular remark. "Yes;
that's what I did it for."

"But what interest have you in saving the 'Clarion'?" demanded Esme,
bewildered.

"The failure of the 'Clarion' would be a disaster to the city," observed
Miss Pierce in copy-book style.

"Kathie! You should make two jabs in the air with your forefinger when
you quote. Otherwise you're a plagiarist. Let me see." Esme pondered.
"Hugh Merritt," she decided.

Kathleen kept her eyes steady ahead, but a flood of color rose in her
face.

"I had an awful fight over it with him before--before I gave in," she
said.

"Are you going to marry Hugh?" demanded Esme bluntly.

The color deepened until even the velvety eyes seemed tinged with it. "I
don't know. _He_ isn't exactly popular with Pop, either."

Esme reached over and gave her friend a surreptitious little hug, which
might have cost a crossing pedestrian his life if he hadn't been a brisk
dodger.

"Hugh Merritt is a _man_," said she in a low voice: "He's brave and he's
straight and he's fine. And oh, Kathie, dearest, if a man of that kind
loves you, don't you ever, ever let anything come between you."

"Hello!" said Kathleen in surprise. "That don't sound much like the
Great American Man-eating Pumess of yore. There's been a big change in
you since you sidetracked Will Douglas, Esme. Did you really care? No,
of course, you didn't," she answered herself. "He's a nice chap, but he
isn't particularly brave or fine, I guess."

A light broke in upon her:

"Esme! Is it, after all--"

"No, no, no, no, NO!" cried the victim of this highly feminine
deduction, in panic. "It isn't any one."

"No, of course it isn't, dear. I didn't mean to tease you. Hello! what
have we here?"

The car stopped with a jar on a side street, some distance from the
quarantined section. Seated on the curb a woman was wailing over the
stiffened form of a young child. The boy's teeth were clenched and his
face darkly suffused.

"Convulsions," said Esme.

The two girls were out of the car simultaneously. The agonized mother,
an Italian, was deaf to Esme's persuasions that the child be turned over
to them.

"What shall we do?" she asked, turning to Kathleen in dismay. "I think
he's dying, and I can't make the woman