All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 99: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A THIEVES’ COMEDY. away if Mac hadn’ ha’ butted in wit’ the coin for a crackerjack lawyer what proved a alibi. Crabbe an’ Paler an’ Gregg an’ the whole gang's been helped out the same way—” 1 nodded, with a clearer understand- ing of the Rob Roy gang’s beginnings. I did not speak, thinking it better to allow her to get the venom out of her system in her own way. Some one moving about in the hall entered one of the bedrooms, and when a door closed, Della eyed me militantly and asked, as if she were daring me to deny it. “She's crazy about him, ain't she?” “You mean Miss Mac?” “sire |.” “Why no, I don’t think so.” “Aw — tell it to Sweeney; Herr She's daffy abou’ him! An’ she makes a bluff about wantin’ the Gob- bler to get all that’s comin’ to him, w'en she'd put dope in his milk if she'd get away with it. Why, say! That night in Passaic, we’n my sister died, she argued with Mac to beat the ban’ about him havin’ no right to keep his woid to Nessie *bout lookin’ out for the Gobbler an’ keepin’ him fr'm being brung up in the kitchen. “ She said me or the kid's dad wuz his nacheral guardian, an’ that the lawr didn’t give Mac no right to take him away fr’m us. But wen Mac shut his face tight an’ says he had a dooty to get by wit’, lawr or no lawr, she closed up like a clam an’ didn’t say another woid. “But starch ain't whiter'n she wuz wen Mac come acrost to me an’ ast me to help him give the kid a chanst.” She had made that night at Passaic painfully clear, and I could under- stand that Campbell's position had been peculiar. He had been unable to bring Rol- lins’s duty and rights as parent upon the situation, because that meant re- vealing his identity and endangering the life of Margaret's father. Nor could he break his promise to the child’s mother without casting Mar- 809 garet’s half-brother forever into Heaven knows what! Alice had plainly shown that she had been less eager to protect her uncle’s worthless hide. ~'I was quite sure; when she pointed out who the child's natural guardians were, that she did not intend Campbell to think that she meant that Della was the least of two evils. And he, quixotic idiot that he was, taking up Rollins’s burden and keep- ing his promise to protect the baby from its mother’s hereditary environ- ment, had set his face toward the mid- dle course, and proposed the ridicu- lous union with Della as the simplest Way out. “You gonna be roun’ to-night?” The query startled me from a rev- erie in which a thought had come to me. “Yes; till nine-thirty.” “T'll give you them sparks Jimmy’s sendin’ over fore you leave. I gotta a lady frien’ comin’ to see me roun’ nine. She’s grabbed a swell feller somewhere’s an’ wants to give him an airin’ an’ show me up.” A. short, forced laugh mocked the assertion. “ I guess I don’ needa lose any sleep abou’ that.” She walked slowly away from me toward the portiéres, in every line and movement what heredity had made her. The flapping of the hangings be- hind her was no more listless than she. It was plain that her passion for Mac did not give her any false ideas about the future with him. I went to a restaurant for lunch, and when I returned learned from the nurse that Miss Borrowman had gone out. Taking a peep at the Gobbler, I saw that he was dull-eyed and listless, and mentioning the fact to the nurse, was informed that he had been “ nearly poisoned with sour milk ’’—that he was a little better, and that all Miss Borrowman knew about the care of babies was to pet them and give them paregoric when they cried. comicloooks.com