Under the Law

by Edwina Stanton Babcock

Minga, with a gesture of disgust, dropped her eyes. She waved her buffer in the air, fastening her eyes on her friend. "Does he think he can fool me that way? Ahem, I'm talking." The other girl's head was turned away, the eyes staring in troubled fixity at the river. "If anyone were to fall out of the hearse and ask me," said Minga with tender solemnity, "I should reply that I did not think you were interested."

It was the quality of essential good nature in this girl that made her loved. All Minga's idle words, her flippancies and inconsistencies seemed to conceal some sound core of being that made her not willing to wound. Now, she went over and brought her hand down on Sard's back.

"Minga!" The other started irritably and edged away.

"Oh, pshaw!" said the little person with bobbed hair. "Sard, don't be silly; you act like Mannikin Maude, the Temperamental Tempest. Now in good, plain American what's the matter?" Minga, turning her friend's head to meet her eyes, pronounced her verdict.

"Say, look here, you've—you've been no good since that night on the mountain with Watts Shipman; he snubbed you, I suppose, the way he snubbed us all. Well, what do you care? He's only a silly old bachelor. Pooh!" Minga addressed her finger nails, "I could eat into his heart like a maggot if I only wanted to——" She slapped Sard on the back again. "Ooooo—but you're gloomy. Brace up, cheer up, swell up, the worst is yet to come!"

No one could withstand this absurd rallying. The girl at the window smiled in spite of herself, but she shook her head.

"Minga," in a low voice, "that man out there is somebody!"

"Bllllaaaaa." Minga rolled in despairing disapprobation on the couch. "I know it, but it's not my affair. I knew that was what was going on in your head. Lawrence Multimillionaire, the missing heir of Deepcroft Manor—Oh!" Minga wailed, "to think of you, Sard, the steady, the highbrow, the blessed Damosel, to come to a thing like this! Honest, I do think the movies turn our heads when—when we least expect it. I thought I noticed that the garbage man wore a fraternity pin," she jeered, "and surely the iceman quoted from the 'Rubaiyat' yesterday morning."

But Sard would not catch at this mood, she only put aside the teasing hand that tweaked her hair and fussed over her belt buckle. At last, she said half under her breath, "If it is amnesia, if he himself doesn't know who he is, where he belongs, think of the horror of that!"

There was a whir and chug of an arrested car on the drive under the window. Dunstan with klaxon and voice hailed them. "Oh, you Minga, put out your head. Say, goils, we've got a notion. The Gertrude bunch is going to pull off that canoe trip up the Hackensack River this afternoon—supper and a few ghost stories, toasted marshmallows, wit, laughter, and moonlight. Want to go?"