that he should come in and make a night of it.

Bessie saw that it was Jeff, and they stood a moment, looking at each
other. Jeff tried to free himself with an appeal to Bessie: "I beg your
pardon, Miss Lynde. I walked home with your brother, and I was just
helping him to get in--I didn't think that you--"

Alan said, with his measured distinctness: "Nobody cares what you think.
Come in, and get something to carry you over the bridge. Cambridge cars
stopped running long ago. I say you shall!" He began to raise his voice.
A light flashed in a window across the way, and a sash was lifted; some
one must be looking out.

"Oh, come in with him!" Bessie implored, and at a little yielding in Jeff
her brother added:

"Come in, you damn jay!" He pulled at Jeff.

Jeff made haste to shut the door behind them. He was laughing; and if it
was from mere brute insensibility to what would have shocked another in
the situation, his frank recognition of its grotesqueness was of better
effect than any hopeless effort to ignore it would have been. People
adjust themselves to their trials; it is the pretence of the witness that
there is no trial which hurts, and Bessie was not wounded by Jeff's
laugh.

"There's a fire here in the reception-room," she said. "Can you get him
in?"

"I guess so."