At noon Jim came in to see me, bringing Anne as a concession to Bella. He was in a rage, and he carried the morning paper like a club in his hand.
“What sort of a newspaper lie would you call this?” he demanded irritably. “It makes me crazy; everybody with a mental image of me leaning over the parapet of the roof, waving a board, with the rest of you sitting on my legs to keep me from overbalancing!”
“Maybe there’s a picture!” Anne said hopefully.
Jim looked.
“No picture,” he announced. “I wonder why they restrained themselves! I wish Bella would keep off the roof,” he added, with fresh access of rage, “or wear a mask or veil. One of those fellows is going to recognize her, and there’ll be the deuce to pay.”
“When you are all through discussing this thing, perhaps you will tell me what is the matter,” I remarked from my couch. “Why did you lean over the parapet, Jim, and who sat on your legs?”
“I didn’t; nobody did,” he retorted, waving the newspaper. “It’s a lie out of the whole cloth, that’s what it is. I asked you girls to be decent to those reporters; it never pays to offend a newspaper man. Listen to this, Kit.”
He read the article rapidly, furiously, pausing every now and then to make an exasperated comment.
ATTEMPT AT ESCAPE FRUSTRATED MEMBERS OF THE FOUR HUNDRED DEFY THE LAW
“Special Officer McCloud, on duty at the quarantined house of James Wilson, artist and clubman, on Ninety-fifth Street, reported this morning a daring attempt at escape, made at 3 A.M. It is in this house that some eight or nine members of the smart set were imprisoned during the course of a dinner party, when the Japanese butler developed smallpox. The party shut in the house includes Miss Katherine McNair, the daughter of Theodore McNair, of the Inter-Ocean system; Mr. and Mrs. Dallas Brown; the Misses Mercer; Maxwell Reed, the well-known clubman and whip; and a Mr. Thomas Harbison, guest of the Dallas Browns and a South American.