"Not on your life. It was some one who thinks a heap more of you than Phineas Everton does."
"You don't mean——"
"Yes; that's just who I do mean. She came over expecting to find you. She wanted to ask you if we had a sure-enough, fire-proof, legal right to be here. She asked me, when she found you were in bed and asleep. I told her we had, and succeeded in making her believe it. Then she told me what was coming to us—what Blackwell had up his sleeve."
"That explains what Gifford was trying to tell me, but he didn't tell me where it came from," said Barrett.
"He couldn't, because I didn't tell him. It's between you and Polly Everton, and it'll never go any farther. I shall forget it—I've already forgotten it."
In his own way Barrett was as scrupulous as an honest man ought to be. "I wish she hadn't done it, Jimmie. It doesn't ring just right, you know; while her father is still on the Lawrenceburg pay-rolls."
Right there and then is when I came the nearest to having a quarrel with Robert Barrett.
"You blind beetle!" I exploded. "Don't you see that she did it for you? But beyond that, she was perfectly right. She saw that an unjust thing was about to be done, and she tried to chock the wheels. The man doesn't live who can stand up and tell me that her motives are not always exactly what they ought to be. I know they are!"
Barrett was smiling good-naturedly before I got through. "I like your loyalty," said he; adding: "and I shan't quarrel with you over Miss Everton's motives; she is as good as she is pretty; and that is putting it as strong as even you could put it."
It was time to call a halt on this bandying of words about Mary Everton and her motives. I had already said enough to warrant a cross-fire of questions as to how I came to know so much about her.