It was all still below stairs, then a soft, stealthy silken movement, cautiously coming up the stairs. Julia Cloud went quickly to the hall door, and switched on the light. On the landing stood Leslie, lovely and flushed, with her hair slightly ruffled and her velvet evening cloak thrown back, showing the rosy mist of her dress. She stood with one silver slipper poised on the stairs, a sweet, guilty look on her face.

“O Cloudy! I thought you were asleep, and I didn’t want to waken you,” she said, penitently; “but you haven’t gone to bed yet, have you? I’m glad. We wanted you to know we were home.”

“Is anything the matter?” Julia Cloud asked with a stricture of emotion in her throat.

“No; only we got tired, and we didn’t want to stay to their old party, anyway, and we’d rather be home.” Leslie sprang up the stairs, and caught her aunt in her arms with one of her sweet, violent kisses.

“O my dear!” was all Julia Cloud could say. And then they heard Allison closing the door softly below, and creaking across the floor and up the stairs.

“Oh, you waked her up!” he said reproachfully as he caught sight of his sister in Julia Cloud’s arms.

“No, you’re wrong. She hadn’t even gone to bed yet. I knew she wouldn’t,” said Leslie, nestling closer. “Say, Cloudy, we’re not going to trouble you that way again. It isn’t worth it. We don’t like their old dancing, anyway. I couldn’t forget the way you looked so hurt––and the things you said. Won’t you please 217 come down to the fire awhile? We want to tell you about it.”

Down on the couch, with Allison stirring up the dying embers and Leslie nestled close to her, Julia Cloud heard bits about the evening.

“It wasn’t bad, Cloudy, ’deed it wasn’t. They dance a lot nicer in colleges than they do other places. I know, for I’ve been to lots of dances, and I never let men get too familiar. Allison taught me that when I was little. That’s why what you said made me so mad. I’ve always been a lot carefuller than you’d think, and I never dance with anybody the second time if I don’t like the way he does it the first time. And everybody was real nice and dignified to-night, Cloudy. The boys are all shy and bashful, anyway; only I couldn’t forget what you had said about not liking to have me do it; and it made everything seem so––so––well, not nice; and I just felt uncomfortable; and one dance I sent the boy for a glass of water for me, and I just sat it out; and, when Allison saw me, he came over, and said, ‘Let’s beat it!’ and so I slipped up to the dressing-room, and got my cloak, and we just ran away without telling anybody. Wasn’t that perfectly dreadful? But I’ll call the girl up after a while, and tell her we had to come home and we didn’t want to spoil their fun telling them so.”

They sat for an hour talking before the fire, the young people telling her all about their experiences of the last few days, and letting her into their lives again with the old sweet relation. Then they drifted back again to the subject of dancing.

“I don’t give a whoop whether I dance or not, Cloudy,” said Allison. “I never did care much about 218 it, and I don’t see having my sister dance with some fellows, either. Only it does cut you out of lots of fun, and you get in bad with everybody if you don’t do it. I expected we’d have to have dances here at the house, too, sometimes; but, if you don’t like it, we won’t; and that’s all there is to it.”

“Well, dear, that’s beautiful of you. Of course I couldn’t allow you to let me upset your life and spoil all your pleasure; but I’m wondering if we couldn’t try an experiment. It seems to me there ought to be things that people would enjoy as much as dancing, and why couldn’t we find enough of them to fill up the evenings and make them forget about the dancing?”

“There’ll be some that won’t come, of course,” said Leslie; “but we should worry! They won’t be the kind we’ll like, anyway. Jane Bristol doesn’t dance. She told me so yesterday. She said her mother never did, and brought her up to feel that she didn’t want to, either.”

“She’s some girl,” said Allison irrelevantly. “She entered the sophomore class with credits she got for studying in the summer school and some night-work. Did you know that, kid? I was in the office when she came in for her card, and I heard the profs talking about her and saying she had some bean. Those chumps in the village will find out some day that the girl they despised is worth more than the whole lot of them put together.”

Julia Cloud leaned forward, and touched lightly and affectionately the hair that waved back from the boy’s forehead, and spoke tenderly.

“Dear boy, I’ll not forget your leaving your friends and coming back to me and to the Sabbath and church 219 and all that. It means a lot to me to have my children observe those things. I hope some day you’ll do it because you feel you want to please God instead of me.”

“Sure!” said Allison, trying not to look embarrassed. “I guess maybe I care about that, too, a little bit. To tell the truth, Cloudy, I couldn’t see staying away from that Christian Endeavor meeting after I’ve worked hard all the week to get people to come to it. It didn’t seem square.”

The moment was tense with deep feeling, and Julia Cloud could not bring herself to break it by words. She brought the boy’s hand up to her lips, and pressed it close; and then just as she was about to speak the telephone rang sharply again and again.

Allison sprang up, and went to answer.

“Hello. Yes. Oh! Miss Bristol! What? Are you sure? I’ll be there at once. Lock yourself in your room till I get there.”

He hung up the receiver excitedly.

“Call up the fire department quick, Leslie! Tell them to hurry. There’s some one breaking into the Johnson house, and Jane Bristol is there alone with the children. It’s Park Avenue, you know. Hustle!”

He was out the door before they could exclaim, and Leslie hastened to the telephone.

“He went without his overcoat,” said Julia Cloud, hurrying to the closet for it. “It will be very cold riding. He ought to have it.”

Leslie hung up the receiver, and flung her velvet cloak about her hurriedly, grabbing the overcoat.

“Give it to me, Cloudy; I’m going with him!” she cried, and dashed out the door as the car slid out of the garage.

“O Leslie! Child! You oughtn’t to go!” she cried, rushing to the door; but Leslie was already climbing into the car, moving as it was.

“It’s all right, Cloudy!” she called. “There’s a revolver in the car, you know!” and the car whirled away down the street.

Julia Cloud stood gasping after them; the horrible thought of a revolver in the car did not cheer her as Leslie had evidently hoped it would. What children they were, after all, plunging her from one trouble into another, yet what dear, tender-hearted, loving children! She went in, and found a heavy cloak, and went out again to listen. Then it came to her that perhaps Leslie had not made the operator understand; so she went back to the telephone to try to find out whether any one had been sent. Suppose those children should try to face a burglar alone! There might be more than one for aught they knew. Oh, Leslie should not have gone! A terrible anxiety took possession of her, and she tried to pray as she worked the telephone hook up and down and waited for the operator. Then into the quiet of the night there came the loud clang of the fire-bell, and a moment later hurried calls and voices in the distance, sounding through the front door that Julia Cloud had left open. For an instant she was relieved, and then she reflected that this might be a fire somewhere else, and not the call for the Johnson house at all; so she kept on trying to call the operator. At last a snappy voice snarled into her ear. “We don’t tell where the fire is; we’re not allowed any more,” and snap! The operator was gone again.

“But I don’t want to know where the fire is!” called Julia Cloud in dismay. “I want to ask a question.”

No answer came, and the dim buzz of the wire sounded emptily back to her anxious ear. At last she gave it up, and went out to the street to look up and down. If she only knew which way was Park Avenue! She could hear the engine now, clattering along with the hook and ladder behind; and dark, hurrying forms crossed the street just beyond the next corner, but no one came by. She hurried out to the corner, and called to a boy who was passing; and he yelled out: “Don’t know, lady. Up Park Avenue somewhere.” Then the street grew very quiet again, and all the noise centred away in the distance. A shot rang out, and voices shouted, and her heart beat so loud she could hear it. She hurried back to the house again, and tried to get the telephone operator; but nothing came of it, and for the next twenty minutes she vibrated between the street and the telephone, and wondered whether she ought not to wake up Cherry and do something else.

It seemed perfectly terrible to think of those two children handling a burglar alone––and yet what could she do?

Pretty soon, however, she heard the fire-engine returning, with the crowd, and she hurried down to the corner to find out.

“It wasn’t no fire at all, lady,” answered a boy whom she questioned. “It was just two men breakin’ into a house, but they ketched ’em both an’ are takin’ ’em down to the lockup. No, lady, there wasn’t nobody killed. There was some shootin’, sure! A girl done it! Some college girl in a car. She see the guy comin’ to make a get-away in her car, see? And she let go at him, and picked him off the first call, got him through the knee; an’ by that time the fire comp’ny got there, and cinched ’em both. She’s some girl, she is!”

Julia Cloud felt her head whirling, and hurried back to the house to sit down. She was trembling from head to foot. Was it Leslie who had shot the burglar? Leslie, her little pink-and-silver butterfly, who seemed so much like a baby yet in many ways? Oh, what a horrible danger she had escaped! If she had escaped. Perhaps the boy did not know. Oh, if they would but come! It seemed hours since they had left. The midnight train was just pulling into the station! How exasperating that the telephone did not respond! Something must be out of order with it. Hark! Was that the car? It surely was!