"Sylvia!" said Henry.

"I don't care. Mr. Allen knows what's going on just as well as I do.
Neither of those women can cook fit for a cat to eat, let alone
anything else. Lucy Ayres came here twice on errands, too, and--"

But Horace colored, and spoke suddenly. "I didn't know that you would
take me back," he said. "I was afraid--"

"We don't need to, as far as money goes," said Sylvia, "but Mr.
Whitman and I like to have the company, and you never make a mite of
trouble. That's what I told Mrs. Jim Jones and Mrs. Sam Elliot."

"I'm glad he's got back," Henry said, after Horace had gone up-stairs
for the night and the couple were in their own room, a large one out
of the sitting-room.

"So am I," assented Sylvia. "It seems real good to have him here
again, and he's dreadful tickled with his new rooms. I guess he's
glad he wasn't shoved off onto Mrs. Jim Jones or Mrs. Sam Elliot. I
don't believe he has an idea of getting married to any girl alive. He
ain't a mite silly over the girls, if they are all setting their caps
at him. I'm sort of sorry for Lucy Ayres. She's a pretty girl, and
real ladylike, and I believe she'd give all her old shoes to get him."

"Look out, he'll hear you," charged Henry. Their room was directly
under the one occupied by Horace.

Presently the odor of a cigar floated into their open window.