Ordinarily, adjusting that hat would have been an absorbing and painstaking performance; just now it was done with scarcely a thought.

How devoutly she wished that the Howe car and the Howe dinner were waiting for anyone in the wide world but her! She did not wish to meet strangers; she did not wish to go anywhere, above all she did not wish to eat. That evening, of all evenings in her life, she wished to be alone. However, accepted invitations are implied obligations and Mary, having adjusted the hat, gave her eyes a final dab with a handkerchief and cold water and hastened down to answer the call to social martyrdom.

It was not excruciating torture, that dinner in the Howe dining-room, even to a young lady who had just listened to a proposal of marriage and desired to think of nothing less important. Mr. Howe was big and jolly.

Mrs. Howe was gray-haired and gracious and Barbara was--Barbara. Also, there was a friend of Mr. Howe's, an elderly gentleman named Green, who it seemed was one of a firm of wholesale grocers downtown, and who told funny stories and, by way of proving that they were funny, laughed heartiest of all at the ending of each. He sat next Mrs. Howe during dinner, but later, when they were all in the handsome drawing-room, he came over and seated himself upon the sofa next Mary and entered into conversation with her.

"You are not a born Bostonian, I understand, Miss Lathrop," he observed.

"An importation, eh? Ho, ho! Yes. Well, how do you like us?"

Mary smiled. "Oh, I like Boston very much, Mr. Green," she answered. "I know it better than any other American city, perhaps that is why. It was the only city I had ever seen until quite recently. I am imported--as you call it--from not so far away. My home is on Cape Cod."

Mr. Green regarded her with interest.

"So?" he said. "From Cape Cod, eh? That's rather peculiar. I have been very much interested in the Cape for the past day or so. Something has occurred in connection with my business which brought the Cape to mind.

My attention has been--er--as you may say, gripped by the strong right arm of Ma.s.sachusetts. Eh? Ho, ho!"

He chuckled at his own joke. Mary was rather bored, but she tried not to show it.

"What part of the Cape has interested you, Mr. Green?" she inquired for the sake of saying something.

"Eh? Oh--er--South Harniss. Little town down near the elbow. Do you know it?"

Mary was surprised, of course. The answer which was on the tip of her tongue was naturally, "Why, yes, I live there." But she did not make that answer, although she has often wondered, since, why. What she said was: "Yes, I know South Harniss."

"Do you, indeed?" went on Green. "Well, I don't, but I have known some people who live there for ever so long. My father knew them before me.

They were customers of his and they have been buying of our firm for years. Two old chaps who keep what I believe they would call a 'general store.' Fine old fellows, both of them! Different as can be, and characters, but pure gold inside. I have had some bad news concerning them. They're in trouble and I'm mighty sorry."

Mary was bored no longer. She leaned forward and asked breathlessly:

"What are their names, Mr. Green?"

"Eh? Oh, the firm name is Hamilton and Company. That is simple and sane enough, but the names of the partners were cribbed from the book of Leviticus, I should imagine--Zoeth and Shadrach! Ho, ho! Think of it!

Think of wishing a name like Shadrach upon a helpless infant. The S. P.

C. A. or C. C. or something ought to be told of it. Ho, ho!"

He laughed aloud. Mary did not laugh.

"They--you said they were in trouble," she said slowly. "What sort of trouble?"

"Eh? Oh, the usual kind. The kind of goblin, young lady, which is likely to get us business men if we don't watch out--financial trouble. The firm of Hamilton and Company has not kept abreast of the times, that's all. For years they did a good business and then some new compet.i.tors with up-to-date ideas came to town and--puff!--good-by to the old fogies. They are in a bad way, I'm afraid, and will have to go under, unless--eh? But there! you aren't particularly interested, I dare say.

It was your mention of Cape Cod which set me going."

"Oh, but I am interested; I am, really. They must go under, you say?

Fail, do you mean?"

"Yes, that is what I mean. I am very sorry. Our firm would go on selling them goods almost indefinitely for, as I have said, they are old customers and in a way old friends. But they are absolutely honest and they will not buy what they cannot pay for. We have some pitiful letters from them--not whining, you know, but straightforward and frank. They don't ask favors, but tell us just where they stand and leave it to us to refuse credit if we see fit. It is just one of the little tragedies of life, Miss Lathrop, but I'm mighty sorry for those two old friends of my father's and mine. And the worst of it is that, from inquiries I have made, it would seem that they have been sacrificing themselves by spending their money lavishly and uselessly on someone else. They have a girl in the family, a sort of adopted niece, whatever that is, and, not content with bringing her up like a sensible, respectable country girl, they must dress her like a millionaire's daughter and send her off to some extravagantly expensive seminary where--Why, what is the matter?

Eh? Good heavens! What have I been saying? You don't know these people, do you?"

Mary turned a very white face toward his.

"They are my uncles," she said. "My home is at South Harniss. Please excuse me, Mr. Green."

She rose and walked away. A few minutes later, when Mr. Howe approached the sofa, he found his friend sitting thereon, staring at nothing in particular and fervently repeating under his breath, "The devil! The devil! The devil!"

Mary got away as soon as she could. Her looks attracted Barbara's attention and the young lady asked if she were not feeling well. Mary replied that she was not, and although it was not serious please might she be permitted to go home at once? She was sent home in the automobile and when she reached her own room her first act was to find and open Isaiah's letter which had arrived that afternoon. With trembling fingers she held it beneath the gas jet and this is what she read:

DEAR MARY AUGUSTA:

I had not ought to write you this and your Uncles would pretty nigh kill me if they knew I done so but I am going to just the same. Busines has gone to rack and ruin. Hamilton & Co. thanks to those and other darned stores, ain't making enough to keep boddy and soul together and they are making themselves sick over it. I don't know what will become of them to if something or someboddy does not think up some way to help them over the shoals. They do not tell anyone and least of all they wouldent want you to be told, but I think you ought to be. They have done a whole lot for you. Can't you think up some way to do something for them. For G.o.d Sakes write right off.

Yours truly,

ISAIAH CHASE.

CHAPTER XVII

People grow older, even on the Cape, where hurry--except by the automobiles of summer residents--is not considered good form and where Father Time is supposed to sit down to rest. Judge Baxter, Ostable's leading attorney-at-law, had lived quietly and comfortably during the years which had pa.s.sed since, as Marcellus Hall's lawyer, he read the astonishing letter to the partners of Hamilton and Company. He was over seventy now, and behind his back Ostable folks referred to him as "old Judge Baxter"; but although his spectacles were stronger than at that time, his mental faculties were not perceptibly weaker, and he walked with as firm, if not so rapid, a stride. So when, at eleven in the forenoon of the day following Mary's dinner at the Howes' home, the Judge heard someone enter the outer room of his offices near the Ostable courthouse, he rose from his chair in the inner room and, without waiting for his clerk to announce the visitor, opened the door himself.

The caller whose question the clerk was about to answer, or would probably have answered as soon as he finished staring in awestruck admiration, was a young lady. The Judge looked at her over his spectacles and then through them and decided that she was a stranger. He stepped forward.

"I am Judge Baxter," he said. "Did you wish to see me?"

She turned toward him. "Yes," she said simply. "I should like to talk with you for a few moments if you are not too busy."

The Judge hesitated momentarily. Only the week before a persistent and fluent young female had talked him into the purchase of a set of "Lives of the Great Jurists," the same to be paid for in thirty-five installments of two dollars each. Mrs. Baxter had p.r.o.nounced the "Great Jurists" great humbugs, and her husband, although he pretended to find the "Lives" very interesting, was secretly inclined to agree with her.

So he hesitated. The young woman, evidently noticing his hesitation, added:

"If you are engaged just now I shall wait. I came to see you on a matter of business, legal business."

Judge Baxter tried to look as if no thought of his visitor's having another purpose had entered his mind.

"Oh, yes, certainly! Of course!" he said hastily, and added: "Will you walk in?"

She walked in--to the private office, that is--and the Judge, following her, closed the door. His clerk stared wistfully at his own side of that door for a full minute, then sighed heavily and resumed his work, which was copying a list of household effects belonging to a late lamented who had willed them, separately and individually, to goodness knew how many cousins, first, second, and third.

In the private office the Judge asked his visitor to be seated. She took the chair he brought forward. Then she said:

"You don't remember me, I think, Judge Baxter. I am Mary Lathrop."

The Judge looked puzzled. The name sounded familiar, but he could not seem to identify its owner.

"Perhaps you would remember me if I told you my whole name," suggested the latter. "I am Mary Augusta Lathrop. I think perhaps you used to call me Mary-'Gusta; most people did."

Then the Judge remembered. His astonishment was great.