"I expect there'll be something of a demonstration, Nate," said the manager. "I had West 'phone the verdict to Littleton, and tell the boys to lay off the rest of the day. They'll be crazy, I presume! I know you don't care for such things, but you'll have to put up with being a hero just this once."
"Hope they won't do nothin' rash 'round them railroad tracks," said Nate, a bit anxiously. "The boys sometimes forgits theirselves when they gets to celebratin'. They don't mean nothin', but they forgits. Who'd you leave the babbies with, Lucy?"
"They're all going to be in school till three, for the teacher said Rufie might bring even the little baby to the kindergarten. Then Marry's out of the office, and she'll keep 'em till we get there at half-past four. She won't let nothing happen."
"Well, I'd 'a' been satisfied just to go home and set down and eat my supper, but never mind," sighed Nate in wistful fashion. "Folks is cur'ous about such things. Just because a man don't git sent up for what he didn't do can't make a hero outen him, as I see. But it's nice of you all to care." He looked at Joyce, sitting opposite with Dalton, he and Lucy having been given the back seat together, and a smile played about his lips and eyes, crinkling the kindly muscles into radiating lines of sunshine. "I've had lots o' thoughts, Miss Lav'lotte, since I've been shut up, and I guess I've worked out something. It's a master place for workin' out things in your mind—a jail is."
"Is it, Nate? And what have you worked out, now?"
"Well, just this. First, it did seem queer that a handsome young lady just livin' on in our town, and no blood relation to nobody, should take such an int'rust in Lucy and me, to say nothin' of other folks. Ev'ry time 't you'd come, or send other folks to me, I kept askin' inside o' me, 'Now, what does that mean? What is it to her, anyhow?' Then, kinder sudden like, it come to me once that ev'ry single one o' the good things what's been the makin' o' Littleton begun to come along just about when you fetched up there. And when I'd figured on that a while, and remembered how you and the boss here was allays consultin' together, and how you seemed to feel jest 's if you'd got stock in us, somehow, it come to me all of a heap."
"What came to you?" asked Joyce, her brilliant eyes flashing a laughing glance towards her seat-mate.
"Why, that they mightn't be any young Early after all, and that 'twas jest possible—mind, I don't say as I've got all the twists and turns of it—but that you might, somehow or other, stand fer him. You couldn't be him, bein' a girl, of course, but stand fer him. Don't they have proxers, or sponsors, or some such things in law, Mr. Dalton?"
That gentleman laughed heartily, and Joyce joined in with a merry peal. Even Lucy and Nate helped the chorus, though somewhat perfunctorily, not knowing just what they were laughing at.
"How is it, Miss Lavillotte, are you standing sponsor for any one?" queried Dalton, as soon as he could get his voice.