Mr. Baldwin sat there wrapped in his superiority to all created things, and gave me a stiff nod of recognition, but melted into something resembling geniality as Laura Kendrick took a chair by his side. Mercy Fillmore had come in at the other door while we had been carrying on our skirmish in the hall, and now made room for me on the sofa beside her.
"I'm glad you came," she said. "I wanted to ask you something." The soothing quality of Mercy Fillmore's voice and manner was doubly welcome after the rasping that Laura Kendrick had managed to inflict upon my spirit as the just punishment for the crime of incommunicativeness.
I responded to Miss Fillmore's greeting with fitting words.
"Well," she continued, "what I wanted to ask you was this: Do you think there is any danger to this house from having the Chinese girl here?"
"Why, no; I hardly think so. Big Sam assured me that there was not." Then, after a moment's hesitation, I added: "While I don't doubt Big Sam's good faith in the matter, I have taken the precaution to have the place well guarded. There are four watchmen outside at the present moment--unless I underestimate the attractions of the corner grocery; and the highbinder who tries to get in will have the warmest five minutes of his life."
"How kind of you to attend to that!" said Miss Fillmore. "But I wasn't thinking of the highbinders. What set me to asking you was a meeting I had with Mr. Parks to-day."
"Parks!" I exclaimed in surprise. "You know him?"
"Oh, yes, indeed. We were children together, and I count him as a good friend." A blush that tinted her cheeks suggested that the friendship was a little nearer than she would have me believe.
"Then I wish you would get him to cut his hair! I think it would save him from getting hanged."
"How absurd you are!"