"
"You've got some sense, after all."
The reinforcements were soon ready to take orders, and Porter returned
to bring word that no suspicious person was in sight in the street.
"I reckon I'd best go, then," said Mother Borton. "I don't want no
knife in me jest yit, but if there's no one to see me I'm all right."
I pressed Mother Borton to take two of my men as escort, but she
sturdily refused.
"They'd know something was up if I was to go around that way, and I'd
be a bloody ghost as soon as they could ketch me alone," she said.
"Well, good night--or is it mornin'? And do take keer of yourself,
dearie." And, so saying, Mother Borton muffled herself up till it was
hard to tell whether she was man or woman, and trudged away.
Whatever designs were brewing in the night-meeting of the conspirators,
they did not appear to concern my immediate peace of body. The two
following days were spent in quiet, and, in spite of warnings, I began
to believe that no new plan of action had been determined on.
"Don't you feel too sure of yourself," said Dicky Nahl, to whom I
confided this view of the situation. "You won't feel so funny about it
if you get prodded in the ribs with a bowie some dark night, or find
your head wrapped up in a blanket when you think you're just taking a
'passy-ar' in Washington Square in the evening."
Dicky looked very much in earnest, and his bright and airy manner was
gone for the moment.
"You seem to get along well enough with them," I suggested tartly,
remembering Mother Borton's stories with some suspicion.
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