It’s papa. He’s in jail! I thought you’d seen it in the papers.”

“Why, no,” said Romayne. “I’ve been away—that is, I didn’t see the paper yet. Who are you? Wilanna’s sister?”

“Yes, I’m Frances.”

“Can you tell me about it? Is there anything I could do for you?”

“I don’t know,” sobbed the girl. “I don’t guess there is! Mamma’s gone out to see a lawyer, but it all depends if the woman dies. You see he’d been drinking again, and he ran over a woman and just missed killing her baby, too. They took the woman to the hospital, but they think mebbe she won’t live—”

“You poor child!” soothed Romayne, trying to think what to say to one in a predicament like this. “You say he had been drinking? Why, where in the world could he get anything to drink?”

“Plenty of places!” shrugged Frances. “It’s all over. There’s a new one almost every week somewhere, and there’s devils around here always coaxing him to drink. You don’t know—”

“You poor little girl,” said Romayne, laying a gentle hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Tell me all about it. I’ll tell my father and brother, and we’ll see if we can’t do something to get those places closed up. Did your father always drink?”

“No,” sighed the girl, “he don’t drink when they let him alone, but it’s always going around. He wouldn’t go get it hisself, but everybody he goes with has it or treats him.”

It was half-past five when Romayne came away from the Judson house, her mind filled with the sorrows of little Wilanna and her sister Frances, and turning it over how she would ask her father to get his new friend Judge Freeman to do something about the places where they were selling liquor. Of course, Frances had probably exaggerated it. There couldn’t be as many taxes as she said there were, or people would hear more about it. Of course, there was bootlegging, but that was mainly people who stole automobiles and ran away across the border of Canada, or made moonshine whiskey down in the South somewhere. It was all very vague to her. She had never taken much interest in such things. Her life had been so safe and guarded all these years, the companion of her mother during her lifetime, and now the companion of her father. But Father would be interested in the whole story, and then perhaps he would take her out to call on Judge Freeman, and she would tell him. She had always wanted to go with her father when he went to the judge’s house, but there had always been some reason why it wasn’t convenient when he had to go on business.

Thinking these thoughts, she reached the station, claimed her baggage, and signaled the taxi that had finally appeared on the scene.

“I thought there were always taxis here by the station?” she said to the man. “I waited for fifteen minutes a little while ago.”

“Well, there usually is,” said the man apologetically, “but you see we all ben down the commissioner’s office trying to get our rights.”

“Your rights?” said Romayne faintly, wishing she had said nothing to the man, and reproaching herself for giving him opportunity to talk with her. Isabel Worrell would never have done that. It was because she was not accustomed to riding in taxis.

“Yes, miss,” said the man as if he had just been looking for someone to whom he could tell his troubles. “You see, us fellers has pay fifteen dollars a week to the commissioner to get our licenses, and we ben herin’ there’s a guy in the city ben makin’ it hot fer everybody what’s in this here graft game, so jest kinda got together and decided we’d tell the commissioner we was going to give evidence ‘gainst him he didn’t do somepin about it. So we went together, a gang of us, an’ we give him a line of talk, and wddaya think? He give us money back! Sorry to keep ya waitin’, miss, but you see how ‘twas. I jest had to have that money. I got a sick kid, and she has to go to the hospital fer an operation, an’ I needed that money.”

Romayne was all sympathy now.