Mrs. Lightener looked at Bonbright’s pale, weary, worried face.  “You let him be, Malcolm. ...  Never mind him,” she said to the boy.  “You just go right upstairs with him.  A warm bath and breakfast are what you need.  You don’t look as if you’d slept a wink.”

“I haven’t,” he confessed.

When Bonbright emerged from the bath he found the motherly woman had sent out to the haberdashers for fresh shirt, collar, and tie.  He donned them with the first surge of genuine gratefulness he had ever known.  Of course he had said thank you prettily, and had thought he felt thanks. ...  Now he knew he had not.

“Guess you won’t be afraid to face Hilda now,” said Lightener, entering the room.  “I notice a soiled collar is worn with a heap more misgiving than a soiled conscience. ...  Grapefruit, two soft-boiled eggs, toast, coffee. ...  Some prescription.”

Hilda was in the library, and greeted him as though it were an ordinary occurrence to have a young man just out of the cell block as a breakfast guest.  She did not refer to it, nor did her father at the moment.  Bonbright was grateful again.

After breakfast the boy and girl were left alone in the library, briefly.

“I’m ashamed,” said Bonbright, chokingly.

“You needn’t be,” she said.  “Dad told us all about it.  I thought the other night I should like you.  Now I’m sure of it.”  She owned her father’s directness.

“You’re good,” he said.

“No—­reasonable,” she answered.

He sat silent, thinking.  “Do you know,” he said, presently, “what a lot girls have to do with making a fellow’s life endurable?...  Since I went to work I—­I’ve felt really good only twice.  Both times it was a girl.  The other one just grinned at me when I was feeling down on my luck.  It was a dandy grin. ...  And now you...”

“Tell me about her,” she said.

“She’s my secretary now.  Little bit of a thing, but she grins at all the world...  Socialist, too, or anarchist or something.  I made them give her to me for my secretary so I could see her grin once in a while.”

“I’d like to see her.”

“I don’t know her,” said Bonbright.  “She’s just my secretary.  I’ll bet she’d be bully to know.”

Hilda Lightener would not have been a woman had she not wondered about this girl who had made such an impression on Bonbright.  It was not that she sensed a possible rival.  She had not interested herself in Bonbright to the point where a rival could matter.  But—­she would like to see that girl.

Malcolm Lightener re-entered the room.

“Clear out, honey,” he said to his daughter.  “Foote and I have got to make medicine.”

She arose.  “If he rumbles like a volcano,” she said to Bonbright, “don’t be afraid.  He just rumbles.  Pompeii is in no danger.”

“You git,” her father said.

“Now,” he said when they were alone, “what’s to pay?”