Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/252

 with his satellites round him found himself compelled to listen to praise of Jane.

"She's made a hit," Atwood said earnestly. "When a woman talks like that it's the straight goods."

Henry agreed. "She's got grit. It's her kind that get ahead. But it's a pity that she's got to work to make a living."

Atwood, too, thought it was a pity. And presently he and Henry fell into silence as they fitted Jane into various dreams. Atwood's dream had to do with a mansion high on Frisco's hills. But Henry saw her beside him in his long and lovely car. He saw her, too, in a fur coat.

"I feel," said Jane, "like a murderer." Tommy and O-liver had stopped at her front gate to leave her some books.

"Why?" It was O-liver who asked it.

"Come and see." She led them round the house. Death and destruction reigned.

"I poured gasoline into the ants' nests and set them on fire—and now look at them!"

There were a few survivors toiling among the ruins.

"They are taking out the dead bodies," Jane ex- 246