"But how will you make them--"
"They daren't refuse me anything," said Peter swiftly, and tapped his
breast-pocket. "I've papers here that mean stripes for them both. Mind
your eye, Larry, and be good!"
He disappeared through the little gate toward the dressing-room, where
the officials of the meeting waited vainly for last instructions from
their lord. Varney looked after him with a sigh. In Hunston only
twenty-four hours and already to be running the town!
He emerged from the alley feeling rather gloomy, and halted on the
sidewalk in front of the theatre, idly watching the people as they
poured in. The spectacle of this steady stream made a fitting background
for his meditations; for he was thinking, absently, of the extreme
boldness of Peter's course. Certainly, there was little here to suggest
the quiet onlooker. But all at once something happened which checked the
current of his thought as effectually as a slap upon the cheek.
In that shifting, waste of strange faces, his vagrant eye suddenly fell
upon a familiar one--two, three familiar ones--and his flagging interest
sprang to life. There approached, side by side, J. Pinkney Hare, who,
though few knew it, might prove the brilliant hero of the night's
proceedings; the child, little Jenny Something, who had spent yesterday
at the Carstairs house, leading strangers to think that she was somebody
else; and Miss Carstairs herself, a fair flower in that moving tangle of
weeds.
Hare saw Varney and bowed in his stiff affected way. But Varney's eyes
had already gone on to Miss Carstairs, and he did not return that
greeting. Seeing the little candidate lift his hat, her look followed
his, and so her eye met Varney's.
When this happened her expression did not change, except that, so he
thought, she faintly colored. Varney awaited her bow; he half bowed
himself: a stiff smile was ready on his lips. But he never gave it. Her
eyes rested full upon him for a second, with no sign of recognition, and
then moved away; and the next moment she swept past him into the
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