"What are you doing here?"

He answered her not. Her mother was trembling.

"Get out of this house!" she commanded, getting control of herself.

Baptiste was in a quandary. He recalled how he had seen her make her husband jump as if trying to get out of his skin when she was in her evil spasms.

"Did you hear!" she almost screamed.

"I am waiting for my wife," he replied then calmly.

"She is my sister!" she screamed again.

"I suppose I am aware of that."

"Then you cannot have her!"

"She is mine already."

"You're a liar!" she yelled, crying now, and her evil little face screwed up horribly in her anger. Mrs. McCarthy was trembling as if a chill had come over her. Ethel suddenly flew to the 'phone. She got a number, and he heard her scream:

"Glavis! Glav—is.... That man is here!... Glav—is!... That man is here!..." He could understand no more, then, but saw that she was frantic. He finally heard Mother Mary.

"You're wanted at the 'phone," she said, tremblingly. He got up and went to it. Ethel was dancing about the room like a demon.

"Hello!" he called.

"Hello!" came back. "Ah—ha—who—who—who is th-is?" the other sputtered, all excitement.

"Baptiste," replied the other, wondering at his excitement.

"Wh—at a—re yo—u do-i-ng a—t m-y h-o-u-s-e?"

"Oh, say," called back Baptiste. "There's nobody dead out here. Now calm yourself and say what you want to. I'm listening."

"We—ll," said the other, a little better controlled. "I ask what you are doing at my house?"

"Your house!" echoed Baptiste, uncomprehendingly. "Why, I do not understand you."

"I want to know what you are doing at my house after what you said about me!"

"At your house after what I said about you!" Baptiste repeated.

"Yes. You said I was 'nothing but a thirteen dollars a week jockey,' and all that." Baptiste was thoughtful. He had never said anything about Glavis—and then he understood. Some more of the Elder's work.

"Now, Glavis, I do not understand what you mean when you say what I said about you; but as for my being here, that is distinctly no wish of mine. But you know my wife is here, and it is her I am here to see. No other."

"But I want to see you downtown—you come down here!"

Baptiste was thoughtful. He knew that he could exert no influence over Orlean when she did return with Ethel acting as she was, so he might as well be downtown for the present as elsewhere. So he answered:

"Well, alright."

Ethel slammed and locked the door behind him, and he walked over to Cottage Grove Avenue and boarded a car.

CHAPTER III

Table of Contents

GLAVIS MAKES A PROMISE

GLAVIS tried to appear very serious when Baptiste called at where he worked an hour later, but it was beyond him to be so. It was said that he was in the habit of trying to appear like the Reverend, but since the pretended seriousness of that one had never affected Jean Baptiste, Glavis' affectation had still less effect.