IX
The Reformation of Kid McCoy
MISS McCOY, of Texas, had been subjected to the softening influences of St. Ursula's School for three years, without any perceptible result. She was the toughest little tomboy that was ever received—and retained—in a respectable-boarding-school.
"Margarite" was the name her parents had chosen, when the itinerant bishop made his quarterly visit to the mining-camp where she happened to be born. It was the name still used by her teachers, and on the written reports that were mailed monthly to her Texas guardian. But "Kid" was the more appropriate name that the cowboys on the ranch had given her; and "Kid" she remained at St. Ursula's, in spite of the distressed expostulation of the ladies in charge.
Kid's childhood had been picturesque to a degree rarely found outside the pages of a Nick Carter novel. She had possessed an adventurous father, who drifted from mining-camp to mining-camp, making fortunes and losing them. She had cut her teeth on a poker chip, and drunk her milk from a champagne glass. Her father had died—quite opportunely—while his latest fortune was at its height, and had left his little daughter to the guardianship of an English friend who lived in Texas. The next three turbulent years of her life were spent on a cattle range with "Guardie," and the ensuing three in the quiet confines of St. Ursula's.
The guardian had brought her himself, and after an earnest conference with the Dowager, had left her behind to be molded by the culture of the East. But so far, the culture of the East had left her untouched. If any molding had taken place, it was Kid herself who shaped the clay.
Her spicy reminiscences of mining-camps and cattle ranches made all permissible works of fiction tame. She had given the French dancing master, who was teaching them a polite version of a Spanish waltz, an exposition of the real thing, as practised by the Mexican cow-punchers on her guardian's ranch. It was a performance that left him sympathetically breathless. The English riding master, who came weekly in the spring and autumn, to teach the girls a correct trot, had received a lesson in bareback riding that caused the dazed query:
"Was the young lady trained in a circus?"
The Kid was noisy and slangy and romping and boisterous; her way was beset with reproofs and demerits and minor punishments, but she had never yet been guilty of any actual felony. For three years, however, St. Ursula's had been holding its breath waiting for the crash. Miss McCoy, from her very nature, was bound to give them a sensation sometime.
When at last it came, it was of an entirely unexpected order.
Rosalie Patton was the Kid's latest room-mate– she wore her room-mates out as fast as she did her shoes. Rosalie was a lovable little soul, the essence of everything feminine. The Dowager had put the two together, in the hope that Rosalie's gentle example might calm the Kid's tempestuous mood. But so far, the Kid was in her usual spirits, while Rosalie was looking worn.
Then the change came.
Rosalie burst into Patty Wyatt's room one evening in a state of wide-eyed amazement.
"What do you think?" she cried. "Kid McCoy says she's going to be a lady!"
"A what?" Patty emerged from the bath towel with which she had been polishing her face.
"A lady. She's sitting down now, running pale blue baby ribbon through the embroidery in her night gown."
"What's happened to her?" was Patty's question.
"She's been reading a book that Mae Mertelle brought back."
Rosalie settled herself, Turk fashion, on the window seat, disposed the folds of her pink kimono in graceful billows about her knees, and allowed two braids of curly yellow hair to hang picturesquely over her shoulders. She was ready for bed and could extend her call until the last stroke of the "Lights-out" bell.
"What kind of a book?" asked Patty with a slightly perfunctory note in her voice.
Rosalie was apt to burst into one's room with a startling announcement and then, having engaged everybody's attention, settle down to an endless, meandering recital sprinkled with anti-climaxes.
"It's about a sweet young English girl whose father owned a tea estate in Asia—or maybe Africa. But anyway, where it was hot, and there were a lot of natives and snakes and centipedes. Her mother died and she was sent back home to boarding-school when she was a tiny little thing. Her father was quite bad. He drank and swore and smoked. The only thing that kept him from being awfully bad, was the thought of his sweet little golden-haired daughter in England."
"Well, what of it?" Patty inquired, politely suppressing a yawn. Rosalie had a way of trailing off into golden-haired sentiment if one didn't haul her up sharp.
"Just wait! I'm coming to it. When she was seventeen she went back to India to take care of her father, but almost right off he got a sunstroke and died. And in his death-bed he entrusted Rosamond—that was her name—to his best friend to finish bringing up. So when Rosamond went to live with her guardian, and took charge of his bungalow and made it beautiful and homelike and comfortable—she wouldn't let him drink or smoke or swear any more. And as he looked back over the past—"
"He was eaten with remorse at the thought of the wasted years," Patty glibly supplied, "and wished that he had lived so as to be more worthy of the sweet, womanly influence that had come into his wicked life."
"You've read it!" said Rosalie.
"Not that I know of," said Patty.
"Anyway," said Rosalie, with an air of challenge, "they fell in love and were married—"
"And her father and mother, looking down from heaven, smiled a blessing on the dear little daughter who had brought so much happiness to a lonely heart?"
"Um—yes," agreed Rosalie, doubtfully.
There was no amount of sentiment that she would not swallow, but she knew from mortifying experience that Patty was not equally voracious.
"It's a very touching story," Patty commented, "but where does Kid McCoy come in?"
"Why, don't you see?" Rosalie's violet eyes were big with interest. "It's exactly Kid's own story! I realized it the minute I saw the book, and I had the awfulest time making her read it. She made fun of it at first, but after she'd really got into it, she appreciated the resemblance. She says now it was the Hand of Fate."
"Kid's story? What are you talking about?" Patty was commencing to be interested.
"Kid has a wicked English guardian just like the Rosamond in the book. Anyway, he's English, and she thinks probably he's wicked. Most ranchmen are. He lives all alone with only cow-punchers for companions, and he needs a sweet womanly influence in his home. So Kid's decided to be a lady, and go back and marry Guardie, and make him happy for the rest of his life."
Patty laid herself on the bed and rolled in glee. Rosalie rose and regarded her with a touch of asperity.
"I don't see anything so funny—I think it's very romantic."
"Kid exerting a sweet womanly influence!" Patty gurgled. "She can't even pretend she's a lady for an hour. If you think she can stay one—"
"Love," pronounced Rosalie, "has accomplished greater wonders than that—you wait and see."
And the school did see. Kid McCoy's reformation became the sensation of the year. The teachers attributed the felicitous change in her deportment to the good influence of Rosalie, and though they were extremely relieved, they did not expect it to last. But week followed week, and it did last.
Kid McCoy no longer answered to "Kid." She requested her friends to call her "Margarite." She dropped slang and learned to embroider; she sat through European Travel and Art History nights with clasped hands and a sweetly pensive air, where she used to drive her neighbors wild by a solid hour of squirming. Voluntarily, she set herself to practising scales. The reason she confided to Rosalie, and Rosalie to the rest of the school.
They needed the softening influence of music on the ranch. One-eyed Joe played the accordion, and that was all the music they had. The school saw visions of the transformed Margarite, dressed in white, sitting before the piano in the twilight singing softly the "Rosary," while Guardie watched her with folded arms; and the cowboys, with bowie knives sheathed in their boots, and lariats peacefully coiled over their shoulders, gathered by the open window.
Lenten services that year, instead of being forcibly endured by a rebellious Kid, were attended by a sweetly reverent Margarite. The entire school felt an electric thrill at sight of Miss McCoy walking up the aisle with downcast eyes, and hands demurely clasping her prayer book. Usually she looked as much in place in the stained-glass atmosphere of Trinity Chapel as an unbroken broncho colt.
This amazing reform continued for seven weeks. The school was almost beginning to forget that there was ever a time when Kid McCoy was not a lady.
Then one day a letter came from Guardie with the news that he was coming East to visit his little girl. Subdued excitement prevailed in the South Corridor. Rosalie and Margarite and an assemblage of neighbors held earnest conferences as to what she should wear and how she should behave. They finally decided upon white muslin and blue ribbons. They pondered a long time over whether or not she should kiss him, but Rosalie decided in the negative.
"When he sees you," she explained, "the realization will sweep over him that you are no longer a child. You have grown to womanhood in the past three years. And he will feel unaccountably shy in your presence."
"Um," said Margarite, with a slightly doubtful note. "I hope so."
It was on a Sunday that Guardie arrived. The school—in a body—flattened its nose against the window watching his approach. They had rather hoped for a flannel shirt and boots and spurs, and, in any case, for a sombrero. But the horrible truth must be told. He wore a frock coat of the most unimpeachable cut, with a silk hat and a stick, and a white gardenia in his buttonhole. To look at him, one would swear that he had never seen a pistol or a lariat. He was born to pass the plate in church.
But the worst is still to tell.
He had planned a surprise for his little ward. When she should come back to the ranch, it would be to a real home. A sweet, womanly influence would have transformed it into a fitting abode for a young girl. Guardie was not alone. He was accompanied by his bride—a tall, fair, beautiful woman with a low voice and gracious manners. She sang for the girls after dinner, and as sixty-four pairs of eyes studied the beautiful presence, sixty-four—no, sixty-three—of her auditors decided to grow up to be exactly like her. Margarite did the honors in a state of dazed incomprehension. Her make-believe world of seven weeks had crumbled in an hour, and she had not had time to readjust herself. Never—she realized it perfectly—could she have competed in femininity with Guardie's wife. It wasn't in her, not even if she had commenced to practise from the cradle.
They went back to the city in the evening, and before the entire school, Guardie patted her on the head and told her to be a good little kiddie and mind her teachers. His wife, with a protecting arm about her shoulders, kissed her forehead and called her "dear little daughter."
After evensong on Sundays, came two hours of freedom. The teachers gathered in the Dowager's study for coffee and conversation, and the girls presumably wrote letters home. But that night, the South Corridor followed no such peaceful occupation. Margarite McCoy experienced a reversion to type. In her own picturesque language, she "shot up the town."
The echoes of the orgie at last reached the kaffee klatsch below. Miss Lord came to investigate—and she came on her tiptoes.
Miss McCoy, arrayed in a sometime picture hat cocked over one ear, a short gymnasium skirt, scarlet stockings and a scarlet sash, was mounted upon a table, giving an imitation of a clog dance in a mining-camp, while her audience played rag-time on combs and clapped.
"Margarite! Get down!" someone suddenly warned in frightened tones above the uproar.
"You needn't call me Margarite. I'm Kid McCoy of Cripple Creek."
Her eye caught sight of Miss Lord towering above the heads crowded in the doorway and she quite suddenly climbed down. For once, Miss Lord was without words. She stared for a space of three minutes; finally, she managed to articulate:
"Sunday evening in a Church school!"
The audience dispersed, and Miss Lord and Miss McCoy remained alone. Rosalie fled to the farthermost reaches of Paradise Alley and discussed possible punishments with Patty and Conny for a trembling hour. "Lights-out" had rung before she summoned courage to steal back to the darkened South Corridor. The sound of smothered sobbing came from Margarite's bed. Rosalie sank down on her knees and put her arm around her room-mate. The sobbing ceased while Margarite rigidly held her breath.
"Kid," she comforted, "don't mind Lordie—she's a horrid, snooping old thing! What did she say?"
"I'm not to leave bounds for a month, have to learn five psalms by heart and take f-fifty demerits."
"Fifty! It's a perfect shame! You'll never work them off. She had no right to make a fuss when you'd been good so long."
"I don't care!" said Kid, fiercely, as she struggled to free herself from Rosalie's embrace. "She'll never have a chance again to call me her sweet little daughter."
X
Onions and Orchids
THE perimeters of similar polygons are as their homologous sides."
Patty dreamily assured herself of this important truth for the twentieth time, as she sat by the open schoolroom window, her eyes on the billowing whiteness of the cherry tree which had burst into blossom overnight.
It was particularly necessary that she should finish her lessons with dispatch, because it was Saturday, and she was going to the city with Mademoiselle's party to spend an hour in the dentist's chair. But the weather was not conducive to concentrated effort. After an hour of half-hearted study, she closed her geometry, and started upstairs to dress, leaving the stay-at-homes to another hour of work.
She started upstairs; but she did not get very far on the way. As she passed the open door that led to the back porch, she stepped outside to examine the cherry tree at close range; then she strolled the length of the pergola to see how the wistaria was coming on; from there, it was just a step to the lane, with its double row of pink-tipped apple trees. Before she knew it, Patty found herself sitting on the stone wall at the end of the lower pasture. Behind her lay the confines of St. Ursula's. Before her the World.
She sat on the top of the wall, and dangled her feet out of bounds. The very most scandalous crime one could commit at St. Ursula's was to go out of bounds without permission. Patty sat and gazed at the forbidden land. She knew that she had no time to waste if she were to catch the hearse and the train and the dentist's chair. But still she sat and dreamed. Finally, far across the fields on the highroad, she spied the hearse bowling merrily to the station. Then it occurred to her that she had forgotten to report to Mademoiselle that she was going, and that Mademoiselle, accordingly, would not be missing her. At the school, of course, they would think that she had gone, and likewise would not be missing her. Without any premeditated iniquity, she was free!
She sat a few moments longer to let the feeling penetrate. Then she slid over the wall and started—a joyous young mutineer, seeking adventure. Following the cheery course of the brook, she dipped into a tangled ravine and stretch of woodland, raced down a hillside and across a marshy meadow, leaping gaily from hummock to hummock—occasionally missing and going in. She laughed aloud at these misadventures, and waved her arms and romped with the wind. In addition to the delicious sense of feeling free, was added the delicious sense of feeling bad. The combination was intoxicating.
And so, always following the stream, she came at last to another wood—not a wild wood like the first, but a tame, domesticated wood. The dead limbs were cut away, and the ground was neatly brushed up under the trees. The brook flowed sedately between fern-bordered banks, under rustic bridges, and widened occasionally into pools carpeted with lily pads. Mossy paths set with stepping-stones led off into mysterious depths that the eye could not penetrate: the leaves were just out enough to half hide and to tantalize. The grass was starred with crocuses. It looked like an enchanted wood in a fairy tale.
This second wood, however, was bordered by a solid stone wall, and on top of the wall, by four strands of barbed wire. Signs appeared at intervals—three were visible from where Patty stood—stating that these were private grounds, and that trespassers would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Patty knew well to whom it belonged; she had often passed the front gates which faced on the other road. The estate was celebrated in the neighborhood, in the United States, for the matter of that. It comprised 500 acres and belonged to a famous—or infamous—multi-millionaire. His name was Silas Weatherby, and he was the originator of a great many Wicked Corporations. He had beautiful conservatories full of tropical plants, a sunken Italian garden, an art collection and picture gallery. He was a crusty old codger always engaged in half-a-dozen lawsuits. He hated the newspapers, and the newspapers hated him. He was in particularly bad repute at St. Ursula's, because, in response to a politely couched note from the principal, asking that the art class might view his Botticelli and the botany class his orchids, he had ungraciously replied that he couldn't have a lot of school girls running over his place—if he let them come one year, he would have to let them come another, and he didn't wish to establish a precedent.
Patty looked at the "No Trespassing" signs and the barbed wire, and she looked at the wood beyond. They couldn't do anything if they did catch her, she reasoned, except turn her out. People weren't jailed nowadays for taking a peaceable walk in other people's woods. Besides, the millionaire person was attending a directors' meeting in Chicago. This bit of neighborhood gossip she had gleaned that morning in her weekly perusal of the daily press—Saturday night at dinner they were supposed to talk on current topics, so Saturday morning they glanced at the headlines and an editorial. Since the family were not at home, why not drop in and inspect the Italian garden? The servants were doubtless more polite than the master.
She selected a portion of the wall where the wire seemed slack, and wriggled under, stomach-wise, tearing only a small hole in the shoulder of her blouse. She played with the enchanted wood half an hour or so; then following a path, she quite suddenly left the wood behind, and popped out into a garden—not a flower garden, but a kitchen garden on an heroic scale. Neat plots of sprouting vegetables were bordered by currant bushes, and the whole was surrounded by a high brick wall, against which pear trees were trained in the English fashion.
A gardener was engaged, with his back toward Patty, in setting out baby onions. She studied him dubiously, divided between a prompting to run, and a social instinct of friendliness. He was an extremely picturesque gardener, dressed in knickerbockers and leather gaiters, with a touch of red in his waistcoat, and a cardigan jacket and a cap on the side of his head. He did not look very affable; but he did look rheumatic—even if he chased her, she was sure that she could run faster than he. So she settled herself on his wheelbarrow and continued to watch him, while she pondered an opening remark.
He glanced up suddenly and caught sight of her. The surprise nearly tipped him over.
"Good morning!" said Patty pleasantly.
"Ugh!" grunted the man. "What are you doing there?"
"Watching you plant onions."
This struck Patty as a self-evident truth, but she was perfectly willing to state it.
He grunted again as he straightened his back and took a step toward her.
"Where'd you come from?" he demanded gruffly.
"Over there." Patty waved her hand largely to westward.
"Humph!" he remarked. "You belong to that school—Saint Something or Other?"
She acknowledged it. Saint Ursula's monogram was emblazoned large upon her sleeve.
"Do they know you're out?"
"No," she returned candidly, "I don't believe they do. I am quite sure of it in fact. They think I've gone to the dentist's with Mam'selle, and she thinks I'm at school. So it leaves me entirely at leisure. I thought I'd come over and see what Mr. Weatherby's Italian garden looks like. I'm interested in Italian gardens."
"Well I'll be—!" He commenced, and came a trifle nearer and stared again. "Did you happen to see any 'No Trespassing' signs as you came through?"
"Mercy, yes! The whole place is peppered with 'em."
"They don't seem to have impressed you much."
"Oh, I never pay any attention to 'No Trespassing' signs," said Patty easily. "You'd never get anywhere in this world if you let them bother you."
The man unexpectedly chuckled.
"I don't believe you would!" he agreed. "I've never let them bother me," he added meditatively.
"Can't I help you plant your onions?" Patty asked politely. It struck her that this might be the quickest route to the Italian garden.
"Why, yes, thank you!"
He accepted her offer with unexpected cordiality, and gravely explained the mode of work. The onions were very tiny, and they must be set right-side up with great care; because it is very difficult for an embryonic onion to turn itself over after it has once got started in the wrong direction.
Patty grasped the business very readily, and followed along in the next row three feet behind him. It turned out sociable work; by the end of fifteen minutes they were quite old friends. The talk ranged far—over philosophy and life and morals. He had a very decided opinion on every subject—she put him down as Scotch—he seemed a well-informed old fellow though, and he read the papers. Patty had also read the paper that morning. She discoursed at some length upon whether or not corporations should be subject to state control. She stoutly agreed with her editor that they should. He maintained that they were like any other private property, and that it was nobody's damned business how they managed themselves.
"A penny, please," said Patty, holding out her hand.
"A penny?—what for?"
"That 'damn.' Every time you use slang or bad grammar you have to drop a penny in the charity box. 'Damn' is much worse than slang; it's swearing. I ought to charge you five cents, but since this is the first offense, I'll let you off with one."
He handed over his penny, and Patty gravely pocketed it.
"What sort of things do you learn in that school?" he inquired with a show of curiosity.
She obligingly furnished a sample:
"The perimeters of similar polygons are as their homologous sides."
"You will find that useful," he commented with the suggestion of a twinkle in his eye.
"Very," she agreed—"on examination day."
After half an hour, onion-planting grew to be wearying work; but Patty was bound to be game, and stick to her job as long as he did. Finally, however, the last onion was in, and the gardener rose and viewed the neat rows with some satisfaction.
"That will do for to-day," he declared; "we've earned a rest."
They sat down, Patty on the wheelbarrow, the man on an upturned tub.
"How do you like working for Mr. Weatherby?" she inquired. "Is he as bad as the papers make out?"
The gardener chuckled slightly as he lighted his pipe.
"Well," he said judiciously, "he's always been very decent to me, but I don't know as his enemies have any cause to love him."
"I think he's horrid!" said Patty.
"Why?" asked the man with a slight air of challenge. He was quite willing to run his master down himself, but he would not permit an outsider to do it.
"He's so terribly stingy with his old conservatories. The Dowager—I mean Mrs. Trent, the principal, you know—wrote and asked him to let the botany class see his orchids, and he was just as rude as he could be!"
"I'm sure he didn't mean it," the man apologized.
"Oh, yes, he did!" maintained Patty. "He said he couldn't have a lot of school girls running through and breaking down his vines—as if we would do such a thing! We have perfectly beautiful manners. We learn 'em every Thursday night."
"Maybe he was a little rude," he agreed. "But you see, he hasn't had your advantages, Miss. He didn't learn his manners in a young ladies' boarding-school."
"He didn't learn them anywhere," Patty shrugged.
The gardener took a long pull at his pipe and studied the horizon with narrowed eyes.
"It isn't quite fair to judge him the way you would other people," he said slowly. "He's had a good deal of trouble in his life; and now he's old, and I dare say pretty lonely sometimes. All the world's against him—when people are decent, he knows it's because they're after something. Your teacher, now, is polite when she wants to see his conservatories, but I'll bet she believes he's an old thief!"
"Isn't he?" asked Patty.
The man grinned slightly.
"He has his moments of honesty like the rest of us."
"Perhaps," Patty grudgingly conceded, "he may not be so bad when you know him. It's often the way. Now, there was Lordy, our Latin teacher. I used to despise her; and then—in the hour of trial—she came up to the scratch, and was per-fect-ly bully!"
He held out his hand.
"A penny."
Patty handed him back his own.
"She kept me from getting expelled—she did, really. I've never been able to hate her since. And you know, I miss it dreadfully. It's sort of fun having an enemy."
"I've had a good many," he nodded, "and I've always managed to enjoy them."
"And probably they're really quite nice?" she suggested.
"Oh, yes," he agreed, "the worst criminals are often very pleasant people when you see their right side."
"Yes, that's true," said Patty. "It's mainly chance that makes people bad—I know it is in my own case. This morning for instance, I got up with every intention of learning my geometry and going to the dentist's—and yet—here I am! And so," she pointed a moral, "you always ought to be kind to criminals and remember that under different circumstances you might have been in jail yourself."
"That thought," he acknowledged, "has often occurred to me. I—we—that is," he resumed after a moment of amused meditation, "Mr. Weatherby believes in giving a man a chance. If you have any convict friends, who are looking for a job, this is the place to send them. We used to have a cattle thief taking care of the cows, and a murderer in charge of the orchids."
"What fun!" cried Patty. "Have you got him now? I should love to see a murderer."
"He left some time ago. The place was too slow for him."
"How long have you been working for Mr. Weatherby?" she asked.
"A good many years—and I've worked hard!" he added, with a slight air of challenge.
"I hope he appreciates you?"
"Yes, I think on the whole that he does."
He knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose.
"And now," he suggested, "should you like me to show you the Italian garden?"
"Oh, yes," said Patty, "if you think Mr. Weatherby wouldn't mind."
"I'm head gardener. I do what I please."
"If you're head gardener, what makes you plant onions?"
"It's tiresome work—good for my character."
"Oh!" Patty laughed.
"And then you see, when I have a tendency to overwork the men under me, I stop and think how my own back ached."
"You're much too nice a man to work for him!" she pronounced approvingly.
"Thank ye, Miss," he touched his hat with a grin.
The Italian garden was a fascinating spot, with marble steps and fountains and clipped yew trees.
"Oh, I wish Conny could see it!" Patty cried.
"And who is she?"
"Conny's my room-mate. She's awfully interested in gardens this year, because she's going to get the botany prize for analyzing the most plants—at least, I think she's going to get it. It's between her and Keren Hersey; all the rest of the class have dropped out. Mae Van Arsdale is working against Conny, to spite me, because I wouldn't stay in an old secret society that she started. She gets orchids from the city and gives them to Keren."
"H'm," he frowned over this tangle of intrigue. "Is it entirely fair for the rest to help?"
"Oh, yes!" said Patty. "They have to do the analyzing, but their friends can collect and paste. Every time anybody goes for a walk, she comes back with her blouse stuffed full of specimens for either Conny or Keren. The nice girls are for Conny. Keren's an awful dig. She wears eye-glasses and thinks she knows everything."
"I'm for Miss Conny myself," he declared. "Is there any way in which I could help?"
Patty glanced about tentatively.
"You have quite a number of plants," she suggested, "that Conny hasn't got in her book."
"You shall take back as many as you can carry," he promised. "We'll pay a visit to the orchid house."
They left the garden behind, and turned toward the glass roofs of the conservatories. Patty was so entertained, that she had entirely forgotten the passage of time, until she came face to face with a clock in the gable of the carriage house; then she suddenly realized that St. Ursula's luncheon had been served three quarters of an hour before—and that she was in a starving condition.
"Oh, goodness gracious! I forgot all about luncheon!"
"Is it a very grave crime to forget about luncheon?"
"Well," said Patty, with a sigh, "I sort of miss it."
"I might furnish you with enough to sustain life for a short time," he suggested.
"Oh, could you?" she asked relievedly.
She was accustomed to having a table spread three times a day, and she cared little who furnished it.
"Just some milk," she said modestly, "and some bread and butter and—er—cookies. Then, you see, I won't have to go back till four o'clock when they come from the station, and maybe I can slip in without being missed."