"I guess she's got aright to run away," he declared, brazenly.

But in this burst of bravado he had taken too little account of his
attire. He recalled it now, for the frosty gray eyes of Juliana ran
about him and came to rest upon his own eyes. For the taut moment that
he braved her glance it unaccountably seemed to him that the forbidding
mouth of the woman twitched nervously into the beginning of a smile. It
was a fleeting effect, but it did seem as if she had almost laughed,
then caught herself. And there was a tremolo defect in the organ tone
with which she now again demanded in blistering politeness, "May I ask
what this means?"

The quick-thinking Merle twin had by now devised an exit from any
complicity in whatever was meant. He saw his way out. He spoke up
brightly and with no shadow of guilt upon his fair young face.

"I told her it was wrong for the young to smoke; it stunts their growth
and leads to evil companions. But she wouldn't listen to me."

There was a nice regret in his tone.

Miss Juliana ignored him.

"Patricia!" she said, terribly.

But the late Ben Blunt, after the first devastating shock, had been
recovering vitality for this ordeal.

"I don't care!" she announced. "I'll run away if I want to!" And again,