"I don't mind loneliness," went on Geraldine eagerly. She had thrown her hat on the bed and the gold of her hair shone in the mean little room.

"I love to be alone. I long to be."

"That ain't natural," observed Mrs. Carder, regarding her earnest, self-forgetful loveliness. "Rufus told me you was a beauty," she went on reflectively. "Your father was the handsomest man I ever saw."

"You knew him, then," said Geraldine eagerly.

"He was out here a number o' times. Rufus seemed to be his favorite man o' business, as you might say."

"Oh, Mrs. Carder, tell me all you can about his visits here." The girl's heart began to beat faster and she drew the clean, dried-up old woman down upon the edge of the bed beside her. Why should her father choose this dreadful place, this impossible man as a refuge? It could only have been as a last resort for him, just as it now was for her.

"I was always away at school after his marriage," she went on. "I saw so little of him."

Mrs. Carder looked uneasy.

"I saw nothin' of him except at a meal sometimes. He and my son was always shut up in Rufus's office."

"Did he seem--seem unhappy, Mrs. Carder?"

"Well--yes. He was a sort of an absent-minded man. Perhaps that was his way. Really, I don't know a thing about their business, Miss Melody."

The addition was made in sudden panic because the girl had grasped both the wrinkled hands and was gazing searchingly into the old woman's face as if she would wring information out of her.

"You wouldn't tell me if you did," said Geraldine in a low voice. "You are afraid of your son. I saw it in your eyes downstairs. Had my father reason to be afraid of him? Tell me that. That is what I want to know."

"Your father is dead. What difference does it make?" asked the old woman, looking from side to side as if for a means of escape from the strong young hands and eyes.

"Yes, poor Daddy. Well, I have come to help you, Mrs. Carder." The speaker released the wrinkled hands and the old woman rose in relief. "I have come to work for you, not for your son, and I am not going to be afraid of him."

The mother shook her head.

"We all work for him, my dear. He holds the purse-strings."

Geraldine seemed to see him holding the actual bag and leering at her over it with his odious, oblique eye and smile.

"And let me give you a word of advice," continued the old woman, lowering her voice and looking toward the door. "Don't make him mad.

It's terrible when he's angry." She winked and lowered her voice to a whisper. "He's crazy about you and he's the biggest man in the county."

The old woman nodded and snapped her eyes knowingly. "You've got a home here for life if you don't make him mad. For life. I'll go down and make the tea. You come down pretty soon."

She disappeared, leaving Geraldine standing in the middle of the room.

She looked about her at the cheap, meager furniture, the small mirror that distorted her face, the bare outlook from the window.

"For life!" she repeated to herself. "For life!"

CHAPTER III

The Prince

Miss Upton's accounts were still in a muddle when she reached Keefe. Try as she might her unruly thoughts would wander back to the golden hair and dark, wistful eyes of that forlorn girl.

"I was such a fool to lose her!" she kept saying to herself. "Such a fool."

Arrived at her station she left the car, enc.u.mbered by her bulging bag and the umbrella which had performed a n.o.bler deed to-day than keeping off the rain.

"I don't know, though," soliloquized Miss Mehitable. "If I hadn't had my umbrella I couldn't have stopped him and he'd have sat with her and I shouldn't be havin' a span-tod now."

From the car in front of her she saw descend a young man with a bag. He was long-legged, lean and broad-shouldered, and Miss Upton, who had known him all his life, estimated him temperately as a mixture of Adonis, Apollo, and Hercules. He caught sight of his friend now and a merry look came into his eyes. Miss Mehitable's mental perturbation and physical weariness had given her plump face a troubled cast, accented by the fact that her hat was slightly askew. The young man hurried forward and was in time to ease his portly friend down the last step of her car.

"Howdy, Miss Mehit?" he said. "You look as if the great city hadn't treated you well."

"Ben Barry, was you on this train?" she asked dismally.

"I was. My word, you're careful of your complexion! An umbrella with such a sky as this!"

"You don't know what that umbrella has meant to me to-day," returned Miss Upton with no abatement of the portentous in her tone. "Let me have my bag, Ben. The top don't shut very good and you might drop something out."

"You must let me take you home," he said. "You don't look fit to walk.

You have certainly had a big day. Anything left in the shops? The Upton Emporium must be going to surprise the natives."

As he talked, the young man led his friend along the platform to where a handsome motor waited among the dusty line of vehicles. "Gee, I'm off for a vacation and I'm beginning to appreciate Keefe, Miss Upton. The air is great out here."

"That's nice for your mother," observed Miss Mehitable wearily.

They both greeted the chauffeur, who wore a plain livery. Miss Upton sank back among the cushions. "It's awful good of you to take me home, Ben. I'm just beat out."

"Miss Upton's celebrated notions, I suppose," returned the young fellow as the car started. "They get harder to select every year, perhaps."

"I've come home with just one notion this time," returned his companion with sudden fierceness. "It is that I'm a fool."

"Now, Mehit, don't tell me you've fallen a prey in the gay metropolis and lost a lot of money."

"That's nothin' to what has happened. I'm poor and I don't know what I'd do if I lost money, but, Ben Barry, it's much worse than that."

"Look here, you're scaring me. I'm timid."

"If I'd seen you on the train I could have told you all about it; but there isn't time now." In fact the motor was rapidly traversing the short distance up the main street and was now approaching a shop on the elm-shaded trolley track which bore across its front a sign reading: "Upton's Notions and Fancy Goods."

Before Miss Mehitable disembarked, and this was a matter of some moments, she turned wistfully to her companion.

"Ben, do you think your mother ever gets lonely?"

"I've never seen any sign of it. Why? What were you thinking of--that I ought to give up the law school and come home and turn market-gardener?

I sometimes think I'd like it."

Miss Upton continued to study his clean-cut face wistfully.

"Don't she need a secretary, or a sort of a--a sort of a companion?"