CHAPTER XIII
AN HONORABLE RETREAT
"For I will ease my heart
Although, it be with hazard
Of my head."
Miss Bell sat in her neat little office, with the evening paper in her hand. The hour before tea was the one time of the day she reserved for herself. Susie Smithers declared that she sat before the fire at such times and took naps, but Susie's knowledge was not always trustworthy —it depended entirely on the position of the keyhole.
At any rate, Miss Bell was not sleeping to-night; she moved about restlessly, brushing imaginary ashes from the spotless hearth, staring absently into the fire, then recurring again and again to an item in the paper which she held:
DIED. Kate Rider, in her twenty-fourth year, from injuries received in an accident.
Miss Bell seemed to cringe before the words. Her face looked old and drawn. "And to think I kept her from having her child!" she said to herself as she paced up and down the narrow room. "No matter what else Kate was, she was his mother and had the first right to him. But I acted for the best; I could see no other way. If I had only known!"
[Illustration: "Susie Smithers at the keyhole.">[
There were steps on the pavement without; she went to the window, and shading her eyes with her hands, gazed into the gathering dusk. Some one was coming up the walk, some one very short and fat. No; it was a girl carrying a child. Miss Bell reached the door just in time to catch Tommy in her arms as Lovey Mary staggered into the hall. They were covered with sleet and almost numb from the cold.
"Kate's dead!" cried Lovey Mary, as Miss Bell hurried them into the office. "I didn't know she was going to die. Oh, I've been so wicked to you and to Kate and to God! I want to be arrested! I don't care what they do to me."