"And so you shall, my dear. And in double-quick time, too. Here, Jesse,"

opening the door to the outer office and addressing the clerk, "you step over and tell Samuel that I want to borrow his car and Jim for two hours. Tell him I want them now. And if his car is busy go to Cahoon's garage and hire one with a driver. Hurry!"

"And now, Mary," turning to her, "can you tell me any more about your plans, provided you have had time to make any? If this story about your uncles' business troubles is true, what do you intend doing? Or don't you know?"

Mary replied that her plans were very indefinite, as yet.

"I have some ideas," she said; "some that I had thought I might use after I had finished school and come back to the store. They may not be worth much; they were schemes for building up the business there and adding some other sorts of business to it. The first thing I shall do is to see how bad the situation really is."

"I hope it isn't bad. Poor Zoeth certainly has had trouble enough in his life."

There was a significance in his tone which Mary plainly did not understand.

"What trouble do you mean?" she asked.

The Judge looked at her, coughed, and then said hastily: "Oh, nothing in particular; every one of us has troubles, I suppose. But, Mary, if--if you find that the story is true and--ahem--a little money might help to--er--tide the firm over--why, I--I think perhaps that it might be--ahem--arranged so that--"

He seemed to be having difficulty in finishing the sentence. Mary did not wait to hear the end.

"Thank you, Judge," she said quickly. "Thank you, but I am hoping it may not be so bad as that. I am going back there, you know, and--well, as Uncle Shadrach would say, we may save the ship yet. At any rate, we won't call for help until the last minute."

Judge Baxter regarded her with admiration.

"Shadrach and Zoeth are rich in one respect," he declared; "they've got you. But it is a wicked shame that you must give up your school and your opportunities to--"

She held up her hand.

"Please don't!" she begged. "If you knew how glad I am to be able to do something, if it is only to give up!"

The car and Jim were at the door a few minutes later and Mary, having said good-by to the Judge and promised faithfully to keep him posted as to events at home, climbed into the tonneau and was whizzed away. Jim, the driver, after a few attempts at conversation, mainly concerning the "unseasonableness" of the weather, finding responses few and absently given, relapsed into silence. Silence was what Mary desired, silence and speed, and Jim obliged with the latter.

Over the road by which, a dozen years before, she had driven in the old buggy she now rode again. Then, as now, she wondered what she should find at her journey's end. Here, however, the resemblance ceased, for whereas then she looked forward, with a child's antic.i.p.ations, to nothing more definite than new sights and new and excitingly delightful adventures, now she saw ahead--what? Great care and anxiety and trouble certainly, these at the best; and at the worst, failure and disappointment and heartbreak. And behind her she was leaving opportunity and the pleasant school life and friends, leaving them forever.

She was leaving Crawford, too, leaving him without a word of explanation. She had had no time to write even a note. Mrs. Wyeth, after protesting vainly against her guest's decision to leave for the Cape by the earliest train in the morning, had helped to pack a few essential belongings; the others she was to pack and send later on, when she received word to do so. The three, Mrs. Wyeth, Miss Pease, and Mary, had talked and argued and planned until almost daylight. Then followed an hour or two of uneasy sleep, a hurried breakfast, and the rush to the train. Mary had not written Crawford; the shock of what she had been told at the Howes' and her great anxiety to see Judge Baxter and learn if what she had heard was true had driven even her own love story from her mind. Now she remembered that she had given him permission to call, not this evening but the next, to say good-by before leaving for the West. He would be disappointed, poor fellow. Well, she must not think of that. She must not permit herself to think of anyone but her uncles or of anything except the great debt of love and grat.i.tude she owed them and of the sacrifice they had made for her. She could repay a little of that sacrifice now; at least she could try. She would think of that and of nothing else.

And then she wondered what Crawford would think or say when he found she had gone.

CHAPTER XVIII

The main street of South Harniss looked natural enough as the motor car buzzed along it. It was but a few months since Mary had been there, yet it seemed ever so much more. She felt so much older than on those Christmas holidays. When the store of Hamilton and Company came in sight she sank down on the back seat in order not to be seen. She knew her uncles were, in all probability, there at the store, and she wished to see Isaiah and talk with him before meeting them.

Isaiah was in the kitchen by the cookstove when she opened the door. He turned, saw her, and stood petrified. Mary entered and closed the door behind her. By that time Mr. Chase had recovered sufficiently from his ossification to speak.

"Eh--eh--by time!" he gasped. "I snum if it ain't you!"

Mary nodded. "Isaiah," she asked quickly, "are you alone? Are my uncles, both of them, at the store?"

But the cook and steward had not yet completely got over the effect of the surprise. He still stared at her.

"It IS you, ain't it!" he stammered. "I--I--by time, I do believe you've come home, same as I asked you to."

"Of course I've come home. How in the world could I be here if I hadn't? DON'T stare at me like that, with your mouth open like a--like a codfish. Tell me, are Uncle Shad and Uncle Zoeth at the store?"

"Eh--Yes, I cal'late they be. Ain't neither of 'em come home to dinner yet. I'm expectin' one of 'em 'most any minute. I'll run up and fetch 'em. Say! How in the nation did you get here this time of day?"

"I shall tell you by and by. No, I don't want you to get my uncles. I want to talk with you alone first. Now, Isaiah, sit down! Sit down in that chair. I want you to tell me just how bad things are. Tell me everything, all you know about it, and don't try to make the situation better than it is. And please HURRY!"

Isaiah, bewildered but obedient, sat down. The command to hurry had the effect of making him so nervous that, although he talked enough to have described the most complicated situation, his ideas were badly snarled and Mary had to keep interrupting in order to untangle them. And, after all, what he had to tell was not very definite. Business was bad at the store; that was plain to everyone in town. "All hands" were trading at the new stores where prices were lower, stocks bigger and more up-to-date, and selling methods far, far in advance of those of Hamilton and Company.

"About the only customers that stick by us," declared Isaiah, "are folks like 'Rastus Young and the rest of the deadbeats. THEY wouldn't leave us for nothin'--and nothin's what they pay, too, drat 'em!"

The partners had not told him of their troubles, but telling was not necessary. He had seen and heard enough.

"They are right on the ragged edge of goin' on the rocks," vowed Isaiah.

"Zoeth, he's that thin and peaked 'twould make a sick pullet look fleshy alongside of him. And Cap'n Shad goes around with his hands rammed down in his beckets--"

"In his what?"

"In his britches pockets, and he don't scurcely speak a word for hours at a stretch. And they're up all times of the night, fussin' over account books and writin' letters and I don't know what all. It's plain enough what's comin'. Everybody in town is on to it. Why, I was up to the store t'other day settin' outside on the steps and Ab Bacheldor came along. He hates Cap'n Shad worse'n pizen, you know. 'h.e.l.lo, Isaiah!' he says to me, he says. 'Is that you?' he says. 'Course it's me,' says I.

Who'd you think 'twas?' 'I didn't know but it might be the sheriff,'

he says. 'I understand he's settin' round nowadays just a-waitin'.' And Zoeth was right within hearin', too!"

"Oh!" exclaimed Mary indignantly.

"Yup, that's what he said," went on Isaiah. "But I got in one dig on my own hook. 'The sheriff don't wait much down to your house, Abner, does he?' says I. 'You bet he don't,' says he; 'he don't have to.' 'Well, he'd starve to death if he waited there long,' says I. Ho, ho! His wife's the stingiest woman about her cookin' that there is on the Cape.

Why, one time she took a notion she'd keep boarders and Henry Ryder, that drives the fruit cart, he started to board there. But he only stayed two days. The fust day they had biled eggs and the next day they had soup made out of the sh.e.l.ls. Course that probably ain't true--Henry's an awful liar--but all the same--"

"Never mind Henry Ryder, or Abner Bacheldor, either," interrupted Mary.

"How did you happen to send for me, Isaiah?"

"Eh? Oh, that just came of itself, as you might say. I kept gettin' more and more t.i.ttered up and worried as I see how things was goin' and I kept wishin' you was here, if 'twas only to have somebody to talk it over with. But I didn't dast to write and when you was home Christmas I never dast to say nothin' because Cap'n Shad had vowed he'd butcher me if I told tales to you about any home troubles. That's it, you see! All through this their main idea has been not to trouble you. 'She mustn't know anything or she'll worry,' says Zoeth, and Cap'n Shad he says, 'That's so.' They think an awful sight of you, Mary-'Gusta."

Mary did not trust herself to look up.

"I know," she said. "Go on, Isaiah."

"Well, I kept thinkin' and thinkin' and one day last week Ezra Hopkins, that's the butcher cart feller, he and me was talkin' and he says: 'Trade ain't very brisk up to the store, is it?' he says. 'Everybody says 'tain't.' 'Then if everybody knows so much what d'ye ask me for?'

says I. 'Oh, don't get mad,' says he. 'But I tell you this, Isaiah,'

he says, 'if Mary-'Gusta Lathrop hadn't gone away to that fool Boston school things would have been different with Hamilton and Company. She's a smart girl and a smart business woman. I believe she'd have saved the old fellers,' he says. 'She was up-to-date and she had the know-how,'

says he. Well, I kept thinkin' what he said and--and--well, I wrote. For the land sakes don't tell Shad nor Zoeth that I wrote, but I'm glad I done it. I don't know's you can do anything, I don't know's anybody can, but I'm mighty glad you're here, Mary-'Gusta."

Mary sighed. "I'm glad I am here, too, Isaiah," she agreed, "although I, too, don't know that I can do anything. But," she added solemnly, "I am going to try very hard. Now we mustn't let Uncle Shad or Uncle Zoeth know that I have heard about their trouble. We must let them think I am at home for an extra holiday. Then I shall be able to look things over and perhaps plan a little. When I am ready to tell what I mean to do I can tell the rest. . . . Sshh! Here comes one of them now. It's Uncle Zoeth. Look happy, Isaiah! HAPPY--not as if you were choking to death!

Well, Uncle Zoeth, aren't you surprised to see me?"

Surprised he certainly was; at first, like Isaiah, he could scarcely believe she was really there. Then, naturally, he wished to know WHY she was there. She dodged the questions as best she could and Zoeth, innocent and truthful as always, accepted without a suspicion her vague explanation concerning an opportunity to run down and see them for a little while. Dinner was put on the table and then Isaiah hastened up to relieve Shadrach at the store in order that the partners and Mary might eat together.