"Good-by, Persis. I wish I'd been a better man. But the fact is I ain't fit to tie your shoe-strings, and that ends it. Good-by."

He held out his hand, a formality unprecedented. She realized that he meant it for good-by, not good night. Some perversity kept her eyes upon her work, her hands occupied.

"Good-by, Thomas."

The door creaked ajar. There was a pause. It closed reluctantly. She heard him stumble at the steps, go haltingly down the path. She stabbed the fabric in her hand with her needle as if that minute tool had been a weapon.

"Men are all alike," repeated Persis, the tears running down her cheeks. "But there's a difference in women. And the Annabel Sinclair kind, with brains enough to keep 'em from being downright bad and not enough conscience to make 'em good, are the worst of the lot. If the devil couldn't count on their help in laying traps for good men, he'd be dreadful handicapped."

She swept the tears from her cheeks with a swift gesture, swallowed those which had not yet fallen and fell to sewing frantically for there were steps outside. But the late caller was not Justin Ware as for the moment she had feared, but Mrs. West entering with the ponderous dignity inseparable from two hundred pounds avoirdupois. Persis rose hastily and pulled forward the big armchair, her action due to a well-grounded fear for her furniture in addition to the impulse of her native courtesy.

"Set down, Mis' West. You're looking first-rate."

"If I am it's more than I feel," the stout woman returned in a hollow voice. "I'm so worried about Thad that I wonder there's anything left of me."

Persis, politely forbearing to call attention to the fact that enough of Mrs. West remained for all practical purposes, regarded her friend with kindly concern. "My, is Annabel Sinclair pestering that boy yet?

I thought--"

"Persis, it's not Annabel now. It's the young one--Diantha."

"Oh!" Persis resumed her sewing, with heightened color.

"Yes. I used to think he was as crazy about that woman as anybody could well be, but that wasn't to be named in the same day with the state he's in now. He goes around as if he was in a sort of daze.

Sometimes I have to ask him three times over if he'll have another helping of pie."

"Well, it may not be sensible, Mis' West, but it's nature. I guess there's nothing to do except put up with it."

"But, Persis, she's so young."

"She's younger than her mother, that's sure. And that's in her favor."

"And she's Annabel Sinclair's daughter."

"Well, that's better'n if she was somebody's wife."

"It's easy for you to make light of it, Persis. But if he was your boy--" Mrs. West produced a voluminous handkerchief from about her person, hid her face in its folds and sobbed.

"If he was my boy, Mis' West, I guess I'd act as foolish as other mothers. But seeing he ain't, I can look at the affair kind of detached and sensible. I don't suppose you're especially set up over the idea of Diantha Sinclair for a daughter-in-law, but if mothers picked out wives for their sons, there'd be mighty few girls who'd pa.s.s muster, and the balance would have to settle down to be old maids."

"It isn't that I don't think anybody's good enough for Thad," said Mrs.

West in hasty disclaimer. "I can see his faults fast enough."

"Yes, you can see his faults, and you can excuse 'em, too. That's what being a mother means. And you can see Diantha's faults, and you can't excuse 'em without a struggle. Yet she's as pretty as a pink, and a sweet-dispositioned girl, too. She's a long ways yet from being a woman, but as far as I can see, she's started in the right direction."

"I'd hate to think of my Thad leading the life Stanley Sinclair's had to for the last fifteen years," said Mrs. West with feeling.

"Well the cases ain't the same. When youth mates with youth, there's hopes of them learning their lessons together and not making such hard work of it, either. But what can you expect when a man along in the forties decides it's time for him to settle down, and ties himself up to some giddy young thing, so brimful of life that it's all she can do to keep her toes on the ground. It's like hitching up a colt with some slow-going old plug from a livery stable. YOU drive 'em that way, and either the colt's spirit is going to get broken, or else the plug will travel at a good deal faster clip than he likes."

Mrs. West's attention had plainly wandered during Persis' homily.

"Beats all how that girl grew up all in a minute, so to speak," she said irrelevantly.

Persis gave her entire attention to her work.

"It don't seem any time since I was here and she came in to ask about some sewing of her mother's. Her dress was up to her knees, and her hair hanging in curls. Except for being tall she looked about ten years old. And the next thing anybody knows, she's a young lady with all the airs and graces."

Persis preserved a guilty silence.

"I didn't know but you might have some idea," Mrs. West suggested hopefully, "You know you agreed to see what you could do about Annabel, and then Thad got tired of her all at once, so there wasn't any call for you to interfere."

With a determined shake of her head, Persis declined the new commission.

"No, Mis' West. I'm not going to have a finger in this pie, and I advise you to let the young folks alone. If you don't want him to marry her, your one chance is to leave 'em be. And if they do make a match of it, either one might have done worse."

While Persis gave no hint to her caller of her own complicity in the situation Mrs. West deplored, at the bar of her own conscience she made no effort to disclaim the responsibility. It helped to ease the hurt due to the revelation of Thomas' weakness to busy her thoughts with other people.

"If they do take each other it's got to be for better instead of worse.

I made that match without meaning to, but as long as I had a hand in it, I'm going to see that both of 'em behave."

CHAPTER XIII

THE MAIL BAG

"I should 'most think you'd have to give up the dressmaking business or else hire a secretary. It takes considerable time to attend to such a correspondence as you're getting to have."

Joel slammed a bunch of letters down upon the table, his ill-temper expressing itself as naively as that of a child. Nor was its occasion a mystery to his sister. Numerous letters marked the recipient as an individual of consequence. Joel's mail was limited to communications from the distributors of quack remedies to whom he had communicated his symptoms in accordance with instructions set forth in their benevolently inquisitive advertis.e.m.e.nts. When Persis received several letters on the same mail, the possibility that he might be a person of secondary importance in the establishment presented itself to Joel with disquieting force.

"Like enough they're from some of my customers asking when I can spare 'em a little extra time," Persis suggested soothingly.

"No, they ain't. Least ways some of 'em are from men. And I must say, Persis, it don't look well, your carrying on a correspondence with two or three men-folks and your own brother not know anything about it. As the poet says:

"'A lost good name is ne'er retrieved.'

"Who's this that's writing you from the Clematis House, anyway?"

"I haven't looked to see," Persis replied dryly, but her comely face took on color.

"Looks bad when a man right in the same town's ashamed to say what he's got to say to your face. Has to seal it up in an envelope. If you were a little readier to ask advice, Persis, it would be better for you. You women, sheltered and guarded all your lives, ain't expected to know much about the world, and if you just won't seek counsel from them that's able to give it, of course some unscrupulous rapscallion is going to make fools of you."

"Well, Joel," Persis promised with unimpaired good humor, "if I ever get in a tight place where I need your advice, I'll ask for it." But she made no move to investigate the contents of the promising pile upon the table, and without attempting to mask his umbrage, Joel withdrew his offended dignity to the porch. Even then, in splendid refutation of the theory that curiosity is the cardinal vice of her s.e.x, Persis completed the task on which she was engaged before putting herself in a position to answer Joel's inquiry as to the ident.i.ty of the correspondent using the stationery of the Clematis House.

It was her first letter from that source for many a year and she scrutinized the address long and thoughtfully. "I shouldn't even have known his handwriting. If anybody'd told me that six months ago, I'd have laughed in his face." But now instead of laughing she sighed, and her face remained grave throughout the reading of the communication.