"No—o. There are so many things to hear, you know. But it interests me. I should like to see your friend. Perhaps you will bring her here to talk with me some day. Her story as you tell it seems to have some bearing on this bill."
Bess looked around at her grandmother. This was getting in rather deep for one who had come only as "filling."
"Certainly," said that lady, with affability and equal promptness, "you can go over some day. And I will go with you."
At this, attention was bestowed upon the older ladies, and the conference proceeded.
In relating this occurrence to John Harcourt that night Mrs. Pennybacker wound up by saying, with a suggestive motion of the head toward the two bright faces opposite them, "I hardly think that elderly, or even middle-aged, arguments are the thing needed over there! Do you?"
CHAPTER XXXIV
RESCUE WORK
The lead thus unexpectedly opened by Bess was promptly followed up by Margaret, who was growing quick to see openings and to take advantage of them. At her suggestion a note was despatched the next day to Senator Black, asking for an interview. At the hour appointed the two girls, chaperoned by Mrs. Pennybacker, were there.
It would be hardly possible for a story like Margaret's, heard from the quivering lips of the chief actor in the tragedy and listened to under the spell of her sad, beautiful eyes, to fail of reaching the heart of a man like Senator Black. At its close he reached over and took her hand.