"You're good."
A lump rose in his heart. He thought of those evenings before the
grate alone with her and of the desperate fight he had had with
his passions. Good! He accused himself bitterly for the harm that
he had done her. But before her his smile was bright and cheerful.
"We're all going to be so good to you that you'll not know us.
Haven't we been waiting two months for a chance to spoil you?"
"Do you . . . know?" she whispered, color for an instant in her
wan face.
"I know things aren't half so bad as they seem to you. Dear girl,
we are your friends. We've not done right by you. Even your mother
has been careless and let you get hurt. But we're going to make it
up to you now."
A man on the other side of the street watched Jeff come down and
cross to the drug store. Billie Gray, ballot box stuffer,
detective, and general handy man for Big Tim O'Brien, had been
lurking in that entry when Jeff came home. He had sneaked up the
stairs after them and had seen the editor disappear into his rooms
with one whom he took to be a woman of the street. Already a
second plain clothes man was doing sentry duty. The policeman
whose beat it was sat in the drug store and kept an eye open from
that quarter.
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