“I’m sorry the secret is no nicer,” Lance went on. “Now the floor will have to be scrubbed 165 before a lady girl can come out and teach school here. I thought it would be great to have a house-warming dance,––but they’re making it too blamed warm!”
Some one slipped and fell, and immediately there was a struggling heap where others had fallen over the first. There were shrieks of laughter and an oath or two, an epithet and then a loud-flung threat.
Lance started up, saw that Tom and Al were heading that way, and took Mary Hope by the arm.
“It’s time little girls like you went home,” he said smiling, and somehow got her to the door without having her trampled upon. “Where are your wraps?”
“There,” said Mary Hope dazedly, and pointed to the corner behind them, where cloaks, hoods, hats and two sleeping children were piled indiscriminately.
Through the doorway men were crowding, two or three being pushed out only to be pushed in again by others eager to join the mêlée. In the rear of the room, near the musicians, two men were fighting. Lance, giving one glance to the fight and another to the struggling mass in the doorway, pushed up the window nearest them, lifted Mary Hope and put her out on the side hill. He felt of a coat or two, chose the heaviest, found something soft and furry like a cap, and followed her. Behind the door no one seemed to look. 166 A solid mass of backs was turned toward him when he wriggled through on his stomach.
“Where’s your horse?” he asked Mary Hope, while he slipped the coat on her and buttoned it.
“It does seem to me that a Lorrigan is always making me put on a coat!” cried Mary Hope petulantly. “And now, this isn’t mine at all!”
“A non-essential detail. It’s a coat, and that’s all that matters. Where is your horse?”
“I haven’t any horse here––oh, they’re killing each other in there! The Kennedys brought me––and he’s that drunk, now––”