"There aren't any details to investigate, so far as Mary Mason is concerned. I took pains to make sure of that, when I heard that a big hulk of a machinist, who rooms on the same flat, was telling lies about her, just because she refused to have anything to say to him."
When I was leaving the Echo office at noon one day I saw Henderson's handsome black span, with the wreck of a sleigh behind them, come down the street at a full gallop, and I was just debating with myself whether my duty as a citizen, which called me to attempt to stop the brutes, was stronger than my duty to my wife and family, which bade me stay where I was, when a young lady jumped the snow ridge at the edge of the sidewalk and flung herself at the bit of the nearest horse. The powerful animal swung her right off her feet, but he was checked for an instant, and in that instant a young man seized the mate on the other side; the team was stopped and surrounded by a crowd directly. Then I saw it was Mary Mason who was the heroine of the drama. She withdrew from the throng, straightened her flat hat above her rosy face, and walked off with her habitual indifferent air.
"She's got good grit, that girl," said I to myself, but I thought no more about her till I came home on a certain evening in March, and found her comfortably ensconced on one side of our nursery fire, while my mother from the other side cast suspicious glances at her over her spectacles. "Miss Mason," had supper with us, and then I retired to my big leather-covered spring rocker in the parlor to await developments. That chair needs to be approached with deference, for it has a precocious trick of either tilting in the air the feet of any unwary occupant, or of tipping him out on the floor. I know its disposition, can preserve my proper balance, and have never been flung either forward or backward—except once each way.
Presently Belle followed me, "loaded up," as the boys say.
"It seems as if I was never to get free from the responsibility of that child."
"What's up now?"
"Down town to-day I met the chief of police——"
"Great chum of yours!"
"Yes, indeed. We've had considerable conversation at different times about some of my cases. To-day he said, 'You're interested in that young girl, Mary Mason, aint you, Mrs. Gemmell?' 'Yes,' said I, though my heart sank, and I didn't see why he couldn't have addressed any other one of the committee; 'anything wrong with her?' 'Not yet,' said he; 'but there will be pretty soon if somebody doesn't look after her. There's a scheme on foot to take her off to Chicago—to sell a book—so they say.' 'Good gracious! Nobody would dare!' 'Wouldn't they, though?' said he. 'There's a well-known drummer in this town at the bottom of it. He's aware the girl has no friends, and in Chicago she don't even know a soul. It's too bad, for I've had my eye on the young woman all winter, and she's kept perfectly straight.'
"You may think, Dave, that I ought to be hardened to horrors by this time, but I became fairly dazed as the chief of police went on to say, 'I can't move in the matter. We never can touch these things until the mischief is done; but if you like to make inquiries, you'll find out that I've been telling you the truth.'