Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/160

 that she was quivering, "I hope you had your supper."

"You figure you spoiled it for me? Don't hate yourself so! You just left us all a three-nickel beef pie and a thirty-dollar laugh. Honestly, some of the girls were going to look at Harold Lloyd alter supper; but you spoiled it for them. They figured he couldn't be half so funny." And she laughed, but almost cried.

"Coming in here?" she asked him, suddenly choking.

"No."

She glanced up at Ket's window, now perpetually dark, and then to her own, also lightless. "Want to time yourself upstairs?"

"No."

"Where will you let me talk to you?"

"You can come to the Criminal Courts building to-morrow morning."

"I won't," she said boldly. 'You come with me now, down to the lake. You can call it timing Ket and me; or you can call it searching for new evidence or fix it up any other way you want to. Come on! I won't ride you any more. I just want to try to explain something to you about Ket and me."

She pulled him by the sleeve and he went beside her down the walk. "I'm not sore that you wouldn't eat with me—how could you, thinking what you do? And knowing what you do," she corrected. "For some of what you know is right. I mean about Dads and mamma—he's a dead-beat and a souse and she's a dope. You've had us all looked up, Mr. Elmen says; you've gathered the goods on us. Well, that night you came to the flat I told you everything in our place was got by fraud, but my clothes, and that Dads was dizzy and mamma was doped; but my clothes were paid for; I paid for 'em myself; and that's true."

She halted, breathless, for they had been hurrying