Part 16 (2/2)

No, she had escaped these tragedies--yet she was missing. Missing, but now half an hour late. And downtown there were dangerous street-crossings, and dangerous excavations, and reckless motorists....

Once in a while a structural-iron worker dropped a rivet from the seventh story; and there were kidnappers abroad.... The key turned in the lock, and Henry dropped noiselessly into a chair, and caught up day-before-yesterday's paper.

He greeted her tenderly, but temperately. ”Well, where've _you_ been?”

She had to catch her breath. ”Oh, my _dear_, I've had the most _wonderful_ time! I've--oh, it's been perfectly gorgeous! And I've got it! I've got it!”

He had never seen her keyed to such a pitch, and manlike, he attempted to calm her instead of rising to her own level. ”Got what? St. Vitus'

dance?”

”_No!_ The scheme! The scheme we were looking for!”

Henry discarded his paper. ”Shoot it.”

She waved him off. ”Just wait 'till I can breathe.... Do you remember what you told me a long time ago about a talk you had with your aunt?

And she said bye-and-bye you'd see the writing on the wall?”

”Yes.”

”Well, I've _seen_ it!”

”Whereabouts?”

”Wait.... And remember your talking to Mr. Mix, when he said you ought to go to a League meeting and air your views?”

”Yes.”

”Well, I went!”

He gazed at her. ”You what?”

She nodded repeatedly. ”It was a big public meeting. I was going past Masonic Hall, and I saw the sign. So I went in ... oh, it was so funny. The man at the door stared at me as if I'd been in a bathing suit, or something, and he said to me in a sort of undertaker's voice: 'Are you one of us?' And I said I wasn't, but I was thinking about it, and he said something about the ninety and nine, and gave me a blank to fill out--only I didn't do it: I used it for something _lots_ better: I'll show you in a minute--and then I sat down, and pretty soon Mr. Mix got up to talk,--and you _should_ have seen the way your aunt looked at him; as if he'd been a tin G.o.d on wheels--and he bragged about what the League was doing, and how it had already purified the city, but that was only a beginning--and what a lot more it was going to do--oh, it was just _ranting_--but everybody clapped and applauded--only the man next to me said it was politics instead of reform--and then he went on to talk about that ordinance 147, and what it really meant, and how they were going to use it like a bludgeon over the heads of wrong-doers, and all that sickening sort of thing--and the more he talked the more I kept thinking.... My _dear_, all that ordinance says--at least, all they _claim_ it says--is that we can't keep open on Sunday for _profit_, isn't it?”

Henry was a trifle dizzy, but he retained his perspective. ”Yes, but who'd want to keep open for charity?”

She gave a little cry of exultation. ”But that's _exactly_ what we want to do! That's what we _are_ going to do. And they can't prevent us, either. We're going to keep open for a high, n.o.ble purpose, and not charge a cent. And the more I thought, and Mr. Mix bragged, the more I ... so I wrote it all down on the back of that blank the man gave me--and there it is--and _I_ think it's perfectly gorgeous--even if it _is_ mine. _Now_ who's Methuselah's wife?”

On the back of the blank there was written, in shaky capitals, what was evidently intended as the copy for an advertis.e.m.e.nt. She watched Henry eagerly as he read it, and when at first she could detect no change in his expression, her eyes widened, and her lips trembled imperceptibly. Then Henry, half-way down the page, began to grin: and his grin spread and spread until his whole face was abeam with joy. He came to the last line, gasped, looked up at Anna, and suddenly springing towards her, he caught her in his arms, and waltzed her madly about the living-room.

When he released her, her hat was set at a new and rakish angle, and she had lost too many hair-pins, but to Henry she had never looked half so adorable.

”Of course,” he panted, ”everybody else'll do it too, as soon as we've showed 'em how--”

”What--what difference does _that_ make?”

”That's right, too....” He fairly doubled himself with mirth. ”Can't you just see Mix's face when he sees _this_ writing on the wall--of the Orpheum?”

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