"Wait till to-morrow, anyhow," she urged.—But to-morrow, she wondered, how should she explain her afternoon away from school?
Max considered.
"All righd," he at last nodded. "Go home un' think things ofer vith yourself; but I'll be chust as ready to-morrow as I am to-day. You've got to get avay from all this ugliness. Remember that, un' remember I hafn't been fresh, un' I vant righd now to marry you. I hafn't efen tried to kiss you. Think of that, un' think that I'll be vaitin' up at the hotel, in case of drouble, till midnighd."
He wheeled at that, and left her.
Ten minutes later—at a quarter to seven, so rapidly had the drama unrolled itself—she had reached home to find that Etta had been there before her. Denbigh, on the early morning shift that week, was already in bed, but her mother tossed the truant into the parlor and locked both doors while she went up stairs to waken him.
He came down at once, in his nightshirt, roaring. He turned the key and flung wide the door.
The room, however, was empty, and the window open. Mary and Max were already together, hurrying through the warm spring evening toward the trolley-car that was to carry them on the first stage of their journey to New York.
III
THE SPECTER OF FEAR
A sixteen an angry and frightened girl running away from a home where the necessity for work must cheat her youth of its just rights—at sixteen such a girl cannot analyze her emotions, and Mary's were in sheer panic. She had never before been farther from her own town than the ten miles' distant county-seat, had never before been at more than verbal odds with her parents. Philadelphia had stood for the City of Lanterns, and a quick retort for revolution. Now she was bound for New York and marriage.