Maggie studied this strange new being, her hired “companion,” with furtive keenness; and after a few minutes, though she was shyly obedient in the manner of an untutored orphan from the West, she had no fear of the other.  Miss Grierson was a large, flat-backed woman who was on the descending slope of middle age.  She was really a “gentlewoman,” in the self-pitying and self-praising sense in which those who advertise themselves as such use that word.  She was all the social forms, all the proprieties.  She was deferentially autocratic; her voice was monotonously dignified and cultured; and she was tired, which she had a right to be, for she had been in this business of being a gentlewomanly hired aunt to raw young girls for over a quarter of a Century.

To the tired but practical eye of Miss Grierson, here was certainly a young woman who needed a lot of working over to make into a lady.  And though weary and unthrillable as an old horse, Miss Grierson was conscientious, and she was going to do her best.

Maggie made a swift survey of her new home.  The rooms were just ordinary hotel rooms, furnished with the dingy, wholesale pretentiousness of hotels of the second rate.  But they were the essence of luxury compared to her one room at the Duchess’s with its view of dreary back yards.  These rooms thrilled her.  They were her first material evidence that she was now actually launched upon her great adventure.

Maggie had dinner in her sitting-room with Old Jimmie and Miss Grierson—­and of that dinner, mediocre and sloppy, and chilled by its transit of twelve stories from the kitchen, Miss Grierson, by way of an introductory lesson, made an august function, almost diagrammatic in its educational details.  After the dinner, with Miss Grierson’s slow and formal aid, which consisted mainly in passages impressively declaimed from her private book of decorum, Maggie spent two hours in unpacking her suitcase and trunk, and repacking her scanty wardrobe in drawers of the chiffonier and dressing-table; a task which Maggie, left to herself, could have completed in ten minutes.

Maggie was still at this task in her bedroom when she heard Barney enter her sitting-room.  “He got away,” she heard him say in a low voice to Old Jimmie.

She slipped quickly out of her bedroom and closed the door behind her.  An undefined something had suddenly begun to throb within her.

“Who got away, Barney?” she demanded in a hushed tone.

Her look made Barney think rapidly.  He was good at quick thinking, was Barney.  He decided to tell the truth—­or part of it.

“Larry Brainard.”

“Got away from what?” she pursued.

“The police.  They were after him on some charge.  And some of his pals were after him, too.  They were out to get him because he had squealed on Red Hannigan and Jack Rosenfeldt.  Both parties were closing in on him at about the same time.  But Larry got a tip somehow, and made his get-away.”