His face darkened. "What's this? Isn't it James's child?"
Pat was virtuously indignant, notwithstanding that she had put a like query herself a few moments earlier. "Of course it is!"
"Then it's probably the very best thing that could happen to her."
"Won't you believe me, Bobs," Pat implored, "when I tell you——"
"I'm going to put you out of this house in a minute if you don't stop talking such trash."
"You won't help her?"
"Not by so much as stirring a finger."
Then Pat, offering up a silent prayer to the genius of histrionics, played her trump card. "Will you help—me, then?"
Her eyes were cast down; that was in the rôle she had assumed; but she heard his pipe clatter to the floor, felt the insistence of his stare fixed upon her.