Grant stood at the top of the stairs and watched him out of sight. Then Grant pulled himself together, and went out to see the gathering members of the Labor Council in the hotel office and the men of Local No. 10 to announce the place of meeting. Later in the afternoon he met Nathan Perry. When he told Nathan of the meeting, the young man cried in his rasping Yankee voice:
“Good–you’re no piker. They said they had scared the filling out of you at the meeting this morning, and they’ve bragged they were going to beat you up this afternoon and kill you to-night. You look pretty husky–but watch out. They really are greatly excited.”
“Well,” replied Grant grimly, “I’ll be there to-night.”
“Nevertheless,” returned Nathan, snapping off his words as though he was cutting them with steel scissors, “Anne and I agreed to-day, that I must come to Mrs. Williams’s and take you to the meeting. They may get ugly after dark.”
Half an hour later on the street, Grant was passing his cousin Anne, wheeling Daniel Kyle Perry out to take the air. He checked his hurried step when he caught her smile and said, “Well, Anne, Nate told me that you wish to send him over to the meeting to-night, as my body guard. I don’t need a body guard, and you keep Nate at home.” He smiled down on his cousin and for a moment all of the emotional storm in his face was melted by the gentleness of that smile. “Anne,” he said–“what a brick you are!”
She laughed and gave him the full voltage of her joyous eyes and answered:
“Grant, I’d rather be the widow of a man who would stand by you and what you are doing, than to be the wife of a man who shrank from it.” She lowered her voice, “And Grant, here’s a curious thing: this second Mrs. Van Dorn called me up on the phone a little bit ago, and said she knew you and I were cousins and that you and Nate were such friends, but would I tell Nate to keep you away from any 414meeting to-night? She said she couldn’t tell me, but she had just learned some perfectly awful things they were going to do, and she didn’t want to see any trouble. Wasn’t that queer?”
Grant shook his head. “Well, what did you say?” he asked.
“Oh, I said that while they were doing such perfectly awful things to you, your friends wouldn’t be making lace doilies! And she rang off. What do you think of it?” she asked.
“Just throwing a scare into me–under orders,” responded the man and hurried on.