``Don't you want to hear him?''

``I don't care who it is and I don't
want to hear him and I think you are
hateful.''

Ah, dear me, it was more serious than I
thought. There were tears in her eyes, and
I led the Blight and the little sister home--
conscience-stricken and humbled. Still I
would find that young jackanapes of an
engineer and let him know that anybody who
made the Blight unhappy must deal with
me. I would take him by the neck and
pound some sense into him. I found him
lofty, uncommunicative, perfectly alien to
any consciousness that I could have any
knowledge of what was going or any right
to poke my nose into anybody's business--
and I did nothing except go back to lunch
--to find the Blight upstairs and the little
sister indignant with me.

``You just let them alone,'' she said severely.

``Let who alone?'' I said, lapsing into
the speech of childhood.

``You--just--let--them--alone,'' she