This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THAT ROYLE GIRL
69

been fated; he would never be let to live, prosperous and honorable.

She closed her eyes, then opened them and read again.

When the coffee pot boiled over, she let it overflow until it smothered the gas flame and the smell brought her husband. "Why, Anna!" he cried; and she laid before him the paper.

"He didn't do it, John," she said. "But they'll get him."

"Why?"

"They will. I know," she answered and shut her lips.

They had no breakfast; and after ten minutes John was obliged to leave to take out his train.

Anna locked the door after him and thought of him no more for her memories of the man, her Fred's father, whom she had hardly known.

In the third floor flat on the side street to the lake, Joan Daisy's mother awoke first, and she was nervous and querulous as usual in the morning.

"Daisy!" she called fretfully. "Daisy!"

When she heard no answer, she propped herself up, abusedly, and called again; and then she shook her husband. "Poppa! Poppa!"

He aroused and she complained, "Daisy doesn't come."

"I'll call her at once, m'darling," poppa offered and arose and looked into the next room. "She's gone out, m'darling."

"Gone out? At this time Sunday? Where?"

"One minute," poppa cautioned, beginning hazily to recollect. "Something happened. Police. That's it. I remember now! I distinctly remember. Ket; something about Ket—and police."

He wandered about the front room, where Joan Daisy