Half a dozen attendants huddled at one end
of the room, breathless from fear.
Upon the tables remained the damning and incontrovertible evidences
of the guilt of the habituees of that sinister room--dish after dish
heaped high with ice cream, and surrounded by stacks of empty ones,
scraped to the last spoonful.
"Ladies," said the captain to his weeping circle of prisoners, "I'll
not hold any of yez. Some of yez I recognize as having fine houses and
good standing in the community, with hard-working husbands and childer
at home. But I'll read ye a bit of a lecture before ye go. In the
next room there's a 20-to-1 shot just dropped in under the wire three
lengths ahead of the field. Is this the way ye waste your husbands'
money instead of helping earn it? Home wid yez! The lid's on the
ice-cream freezer in this precinct."
Claude Turpin's wife was among the patrons of the raided room. He led
her to their apartment in stem silence. There she wept so
remorsefully and besought his forgiveness so pleadingly that he forgot
his just anger, and soon he gathered his penitent golden-haired Vivien
in his arms and forgave her.
"Darling," she murmured, half sobbingly, as the moonlight drifted
through the open window, glorifying her sweet, upturned face, "I know
I done wrong.
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