"Hold on there, kid—So, you been robbing the cradle this time, Ef?" He grinned at her evilly. "Wait a minute, mister, there's a few things I might be able to tell you about this party—"
"Nothing I don't know already," muttered Archie, his grip tightening. "You've got five minutes to get off the grounds before I tell the police. Blackmail's a penitentiary offense in this State."
The man hesitated, looked at Archie's grim jaw, and went....
Joan and her step-mother gazed at each other. The woman's face had a curious gray look under its perennial bloom, and she moistened her lips with a dry tongue.
"You—you heard?" she said at last.
Joan nodded. She could not speak.
It was Archie who remarked quietly: "You'll want to be going home, I guess. I'll get a taxicab."
Then sheer pity overcame the horror in the girl's mind. "Yes, Mother. Come home with me!" she murmured.
For the first and last time in her life she had called her father's wife "Mother."