“That ’s her.  So you know about it, do you?”

“Yes, and I ’ll help do her.  She must n’t touch one of the fraternity, you know.”  He kept his eyes fixed upon the outsider until she squirmed.  She could not at all understand this serious conversation directed at her.  She wondered if she had gone too far and if they contemplated putting her out.  It made her uneasy.

Now, this same Miss Sterling had the faculty of attracting a good deal of attention when she wished to.  She brought it into play to-night, and in ten minutes, aided by Sadness, she had a crowd of jolly people about her table.  When, as she would have expressed it, “everything was going fat,” she suddenly paused and, turning her eyes full upon Minty, said in a voice loud enough for all to hear,—­

“Say, boys, you ’ve heard that story about Joe, have n’t you?”

They had.

“Well, that ’s the one that told it; she ’s come here to try to throw him and me down.  Is she going to do it?”

“Well, I guess not!” was the rousing reply, and every face turned towards the now frightened Minty.  She rose hastily and, getting her skirts together, fled from the room, followed more leisurely by the crestfallen Griggs.  Hattie’s laugh and “Thank you, fellows,” followed her out.

* * * * *

Matters were less easy for Joe’s mother and sister than they were for him.  A week or more after this, Kitty found him and told him that Minty’s story had reached their employers and that they were out of work.

“You see, Joe,” she said sadly, “we ’ve took a flat since we moved from Mis’ Jones’, and we had to furnish it.  We ’ve got one lodger, a race-horse man, an’ he ‘s mighty nice to ma an’ me, but that ain’t enough.  Now we ’ve got to do something.”

Joe was so smitten with sorrow that he gave her a dollar and promised to speak about the matter to a friend of his.

He did speak about it to Hattie.

“You ’ve told me once or twice that your sister could sing.  Bring her down here to me, and if she can do anything, I ’ll get her a place on the stage,” was Hattie’s answer.

When Kitty heard it she was radiant, but her mother only shook her head and said, “De las’ hope, de las’ hope.”

XII

“All the world’s A stage”

Kitty proved herself Joe’s sister by falling desperately in love with Hattie Sterling the first time they met.  The actress was very gracious to her, and called her “child” in a pretty, patronising way, and patted her on the cheek.

“It ’s a shame that Joe has n’t brought you around before.  We ’ve been good friends for quite some time.”

“He told me you an’ him was right good friends.”

Already Joe took on a new importance in his sister’s eyes.  He must be quite a man, she thought, to be the friend of such a person as Miss Sterling.