Читать книгу Silas Bradford's Boy - Joseph C Lincoln - Страница 6

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The following day the rear room of what had been the Blodgett suite of offices in the post-office building was scrubbed and swept. Eliab Gibbons did the scrubbing and sweeping. Mr. Gibbons was regularly employed for three days of the week about the grounds of the Truman estate on the Old Ostable Road, but during the other three working days he was open to engagement for odd jobs. He was a close friend of Ebenezer Tadgett, and it was the latter who summoned him for this particular job. Banks Bradford, watching the cleaning process, suggested that washing the windows might be an improvement.

Eliab regarded the windows with languid interest. "I don't know but you're right!" he drawled thoughtfully. "You could see out of 'em better, I suppose, if some of the crust was rubbed off."

So the crust was rubbed off and the little room became much lighter in consequence. The furniture purchased of Mr. Tadgett was carried in and, after thought and several changes, finally placed. The desk—Ebenezer had unearthed it in a forgotten corner of his other back room—was a walnut affair, old and rather shabby, but solid, roomy and convenient enough.

"'Tain't the tambour, by no means," said Tadgett, "but maybe you can make out with it for a spell. And you can have it for fourteen dollars, if you think that's fair enough."

Banks thought it altogether too fair, and said so. "Why, that's a ridiculous price, Mr. Tadgett," he protested. "You can't be making a cent on it."

"Yes, I am. I took it in trade from Heman Bearse, over to the Neck. Swapped a chair and a clam hoe and an old pair of steelyards for it. Oh, yes—and he was to give me a dollar to boot. When he does, or IF he does, I'll have made money afore you come in on the dicker at all, Banks. You scratch along with it now, and maybe by and by, when you get prosperous, we'll make another trade for the tambour, eh?"

Bradford shook his head. "That tambour desk will have gone long before that happens," he said.

"Maybe not. I ain't in any hurry to sell it. Want to fix it all up first and then keep it for a spell to look at and—er—gloat over, you might say."

Uncle Abijah came in while the furniture was being placed. He suggested the need of another chair and a few shelves. "You might possibly have more than one client at a time, boy," he said with a grin. "Probably not at first, but later on. And you'll want a shelf or two to put your law books on. Got some law books of your own, I presume likely?"

"Yes, sir. A few."

"Well, stack 'em up around. You ought to look like an able seaman even if you are a green hand. Tadgett and I will paw over his scrap pile together and see if we can't find a little more stuff to help you out. Oh, I'll take care of the cost. You can pay me back after you win your first case for the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. Anyhow, I'd like to feel I'd given one shove to help get your craft off the ways."

He gave several such shoves. One was to commission Jacob Shell, the local boat and wagon painter, to letter the glass door of his nephew's office. "S. B. Bradford, Attorney at Law" was the result of Mr. Shell's labors. The new attorney would have preferred "Banks" to the "S. B.," but as long as his uncle had paid for the lettering he felt that he should not criticize.

Cousin Hettie, when she saw it, did the criticizing for him. "If I was a young man with an honored name such as you've got," she vowed, "I wouldn't miss a chance to put it up where folks could see it. I'D have had 'Silas Bradford' there; but if you must have something in the middle, why not 'Silas Banks Bradford'? I don't believe Mr. Shell would have charged one cent more, and you might as well have got your money's worth."

Another contribution of Captain Abijah's was delivered a week later. The captain came into the office bearing a large flat parcel. He ripped off the wrapping paper and exhibited a framed photograph of the crayon-enlarged portrait of Capt. Silas Bradford, copies of which hung in the Bradford sitting room and on his own wall at the Malabar.

"We'll rig that right up over yonder opposite your desk, Banks," he announced. "Every time you lift up your head you'll see it. It'll be a kind of channel light for you. Keep your eye on that father of yours, boy, and you won't be liable to get far off the course."

Margaret Bradford, of course, was among the very first to inspect the new office. Her son would have liked her to come every day.

"It's going to be lonesome enough here for a while, Mother," he said. "Do run in any time you are out and cheer me up."

"I'll come sometimes, Banks, but not too often. I don't want Hettie and Abijah—no, nor any one else—to have an excuse for saying I'm trying to keep you tied to my apron strings. When you come home for dinner and at night you must tell me everything that has happened, every single thing. Be sure you do, for"—with a little smile—"I shouldn't wonder if I were as interested in all this as you are."

When he told her of his uncle's gift of the portrait and the accompanying counsel to keep his eye on it, she seemed about to speak.

"Yes?" he asked, as she hesitated.

"It was very thoughtful of Abijah," was her only comment.

Banks laughed. "Uncle Bije apparently doesn't think I can be trusted unless there is another Bradford to keep watch over me," he observed. "If I could afford it I'd have your portrait there, too, Mother. Maybe I will some day."

She shook her head. "I'm afraid my picture wouldn't bring you many clients—in Denboro," she said.

Her son did not press the point. He remembered her confession during their conversation the morning following his fateful interview with Captain Abijah. She really was a little jealous of his father, he decided. That was silly, but natural, too, everything considered. He had a number of snapshots of her which he had taken from time to time. One of these he had framed and placed it on his desk.

On the occasion of her second call at the office he showed it to her. She laughed and made fun of her appearance in the photograph, "with that old dress on and my hair every which way." But he could see that she was pleased, nevertheless.

And now began the weary days, the long discouraging days of sitting alone in the little room overlooking the back yards of the shops on the first floor of the post-office building, waiting for clients who did not come. He read diligently in law books of his own and others which had belonged to Judge Blodgett and which his uncle had purchased for him at bargain prices. Between readings he looked out of the windows.

At first, every step in the corridor outside his door caused his hopes to rise; but as they almost invariably passed the door or, when they did pause and the door opened, proved to be the steps of Captain Abijah or Cousin Hettie or Ebenezer Tadgett, or Eliab Gibbons in quest of another odd job, he ceased to regard them. There might be, as Uncle Bije had declared, plenty of work for a lawyer in Denboro, but it was increasingly obvious that that work was not brought to S. B. Bradford, Attorney at Law.

Captain Abijah counseled patience. "It's the first days of the voyage that's always longest," he said. By way of encouragement he entrusted his nephew with the drawing of a deed to a woodlot which he had sold to a neighbor. Banks got through this ordeal without mistake; and the captain, who had been obviously nervous, seemed much relieved and gratified. "Eben Caldwell, who owns the hardware and general store at the other corner," he said, "was talkin' with me about some old accounts he'd had on his books for a long spell. Said he didn't know's he wouldn't give 'em to a lawyer to try and collect. Seein' as you've handled this deed of mine all right, maybe I'll suggest his trustin' 'em to you. Think you could manage 'em without snarlin'? I wouldn't want you to run aground and get me in bad with Eben."

Banks replied that he guessed he could.

"Um-hum. Well, I'll mention you to him. Don't get the notion that it's goin' to be an easy job. Any bill that Caldwell can't collect himself is liable to be a tough one."

They were all tough. And as a test of a young lawyer's diplomacy and tact they left little to be desired. The delinquent debtors were scattered throughout the outlying districts, one or two of them had moved away, and each one had a plausible excuse for nonpayment. Some of the excuses were good and others were not, but Banks was made aware of one thing, the New Englander's respect for the law. To each letter he wrote came a reply, and each call he made found the recipient anxious not to face a suit. "I've been cal'latin' to pay that bill, Mr. Bradford. It's worried me so's I couldn't sleep nights. But my wife's been ailin', and two of the children have been laid up with the measles, and the fishin' ain't worth a darn this fall"—and so on.

The worst of it was that most of these people were honest and did mean to pay sometime or other. Banks found himself respecting some of them a good deal more than he did the grasping Caldwell.

He collected a little here and a little there. In two instances the entire bill was paid. Six proved to be quite hopeless. At the end of a fortnight he laid the results before his employer. The latter seemed to be satisfied. "I don't know but you've done full well as I could expect," he admitted. "Those there"—pointing to the list of six—"nobody could get a cent out of without holdin' 'em over a hot fire, and not enough then to pay for the kindlin'. I imagine," he added with a grin, "that all this hasn't made you any too popular in some quarters, eh? Never mind, business is business, and a lawyer can't expect to be popular with all hands if he attends to his job."

Banks laughed and agreed that he supposed not. As a matter of fact, he had lost little popularity. He was far too new to be popular or unpopular as yet, and he tried hard to be just, to show a disposition to make allowances and to discriminate between poverty-stricken honesty and plausible crookedness. Practically all the unpopularity pertaining to the collecting process centered about Eben Caldwell. "That feller wouldn't kill a skunk for fear of losin' a scent," declared one individual disgustedly.

This burst of activity was like a puff of wind on a calm day in summer—it was refreshing while it lasted, but it did not last long. Then followed another session of idleness, with nothing to do but read the law books or look out of the window.

By way of relieving the monotony and diverting his thoughts, Banks had formed the habit of dropping in on Mr. Tadgett and watching the latter scrape and polish and "resurrect" in his other back room. These calls were always made late in the afternoon, after the door of the law office was locked for the day. He and Ebenezer had become good friends. The love for antiques which they shared in common was the basis for this friendship, but before long Banks had learned to like the eccentric little man for himself.

Tadgett, he discovered, was a shrewd philosopher; he possessed a dry humor and a faculty for appraising his fellow man and woman which was close to genius. Ebenezer liked Banks. During one of their conversations he gave some of his reasons for the liking, and gave them in a characteristic way.

"Banks," he said, "you belong to what you might well call the sheep, did you know it?"

"Sheep? Why, no, I don't know it. If that's a compliment it doesn't sound like one."

"I don't know whether it's a compliment or not; that depends on how you look at it. On the day of judgment, so Scriptur' gives it to us, the sheep are goin' to be shooed one way and the goats t'other. I don't set myself up to part all creation right and left—off my own premises I don't—but in here I'm a sort of secondhand Saint Peter, as you might say. There's nobody but sheep gets into this other back room of mine, and only the right kind of them are asked to stay in it."

Banks laughed. "I see," he said. "Well, if this particular sheep gets to pasturing in this room too often, you just—"

"There, there! I've been beggin' you for the last ten minutes to pull off your coat and set down, haven't I? The first time you come in here I was pretty sartin you was my kind of mutton. After you made a fuss over that tambour desk I was sure of it. Soon as I found you didn't like Hettie Bradford, I knew it."

"Here, hold on! I never told you I didn't like her."

"No, so you didn't. And I never told you that I didn't like this rheumatiz that gets holt of my knees every once in a while. If you've seen how I act when I have a twinge you don't need to be told. Accordin' to my experience, there's times when one look is worth a barrel of talk."

"Come, Mr. Tadgett, you mustn't get the idea—"

"No, now, don't let your conscience fret you. Diseases and relations are laid onto us; we didn't ask for 'em, so we ain't to blame if we have 'em...And see here, I've told you no less than twenty times that my name is Ebenezer, and I answer my friends quicker if they remember to hail me by it."

As he came to know the little man better Banks grew not only to like but to respect him. Underneath his veneer of business acumen, his sharpness in trade when dealing with one trying to get the better of him, his absent-mindedness and dry humor, were other qualities inspiring respect. His treatment of his wife was one of these.

Banks had heard of Mrs. Tadgett's peculiarities. He had heard Cousin Hettie contemptuously refer to her as "that cracked Tadgett woman." Stories of her weird habit of dress, of things she had said, of her "visions"—she was a devout Spiritualist—had come to his ears while at home on holidays or vacations during the years of the Tadgett residence in Denboro. But until Ebenezer invited him to his house and to dinner one day he had never seen or met her. It was a meeting to be remembered.

Mr. Tadgett had in a measure prepared him for it. "Banks," he said, as he "washed up" in the back room preparatory to their short walk through the yards to the cottage, "you've never been introduced to Sheba—my wife, I mean—have you?"

"No."

"I know you ain't. Well, you've heard about her, of course. She's—hum—queer, kind of. You knew that?"

Banks, much embarrassed, stammered that he supposed every one was queer, in one way or another.

"Yes. But Sheba's queerer. When I married her she was teachin' downstairs school over to Trumet. Smart girl—my soul! How she ever come to marry me nobody could make out, and I ain't made it out since. Educated, great reader, knew more about history and geography and all that in a minute than I'd know in a lifetime. She reads a whole lot now; got a book in her hand most of her spare time, fur's that goes...Ah, hum! Well, about eleven years ago she was took down awful sick. What they used to call brain fever 'twas; they call it somethin' else now. All hands cal'lated she'd die, and I was afraid she would and that I wouldn't. She didn't die, though. She got well, all but her head—that never got same as 'twas. Since then she's been queer. Now, as it's gettin' on toward cold weather, she'll be most likely wearin' her hoods. You've heard about her wearin' them hoods?"

Banks had heard many stories, all wildly absurd. He murmured something, he was not quite sure what.

Tadgett paid little attention. "Course you have," he went on. "They're town talk. You see, a year or so after she got up from the brain fever she commenced to complain that her head was cold. 'Twan't, of course, but she thought 'twas, which amounted to the same thing. Finally she made herself one of them old-fashioned quilted hoods same as our grandmarms used to wear. She wore that pretty reg'lar and it seemed to help some, but not enough; so she made another and wore that on top of the fust one. Since then she's made four more. She'll probably have 'em all on when you and me get there...Say, you'll try not to laugh when you see her, won't you—so she'll know you're laughin' at her, I mean?"

"Certainly I shan't laugh. Ebenezer, do you think I'd better dine with you, after all? Perhaps—"

"I want you to. So does she; 'twas her own idea, askin' you. I tell you honest," he added with a one-sided grin. "I shan't blame you for wantin' to laugh, not one bit. All them hoods do make her head look like a punkin on a stick."

It was an apt comparison. Mrs. Tadgett was tall—she towered above her diminutive husband; she was thin, and her neck was long. At the end of the long neck her head swathed in layer upon layer of quilted silk, waved back an forth like a sunflower on its stem, to use another simile.

She seemed entirely unaware of her strange appearance. She greeted their guest with dignified solemnity. The dinner—she had cooked it herself—was good. During the first half of the meal she said very little, sitting in state at the foot of the table and gazing fixedly at the wall above her husband's head. Then all at once she began to talk. Banks dutifully listened, but he found her discourse hard to follow. She had a habit of beginning with some simple statement, drifting from that into a long-winded wandering peroration and finishing with a question or another statement miles away from the starting point and having no discernible bearing upon it.

"The winter is almost on us, Mr. Bradford," she proclaimed. "Yes, it's drawing nigh. The melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year. There are three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. And four seasons—spring, summer, autumn and winter. Four is an even number, and divided by two equals two, without remainder. Two is a pair. We each have a pair of eyes and a pair of shoes and— and this makes it a complete whole. Don't you feel that way, Mr. Bradford?"

Banks, very much bewildered, was struggling for a reply, but Ebenezer saved him the trouble.

"Sure, sure, Sheba," he said hastily. "That's the way we all feel. Now I guess likely Banks'll have another biscuit, if you'll hand across the plate."

On the way back to the post-office building he tried to explain. "You see how 'tis," he said apologetically. "She's apt to get this way when strangers are around. When she and I are alone there's long stretches when she's just as sensible as anybody; but when she gets nervous over havin' company or anything she's liable to get moonin' on, same as she used to when she was teachin' the seven- year-olders in the schoolhouse. I don't mind. You see, I remember her as she used to be, clever and full of book learnin'. Oh, well, it's a tough old world...But she ain't crazy—you can see she ain't that, can't you, Banks?" with pathetic eagerness.

Banks said of course he could see it. Ebenezer nodded. "Yes," he said. "Well, the general run of folks don't understand her. I do. She's my wife and I wouldn't swap her for anybody on earth." Then after a momentary hesitation he added, "I'm much obliged to you for not laughin', Banks."

It was on the afternoon of the following day that he broached a subject which was to result in the new attorney's first real case. He entered the office just after five, when Banks, weary of reading law and looking out of the window, was thinking of locking up and going home to supper. Being invited to sit down, Ebenezer did so and took from his pocket a packet of letters and papers.

"Banks," he began, "you done pretty well with them accounts Eben Caldwell give you to collect, didn't you?"

"Why, I managed to collect some of them. Half a dozen or so stuck me completely."

"Um-hum. That needn't fret you. If Eben hadn't been pretty sure they were all stickers he'd never have risked havin' to pay you ten per cent for collectin'. He don't separate from money easy, Eben don't. The last time Doc Spear pulled a tooth for him, the only time he groaned—this is Spear's story—was after 'twas over and he was reachin' into his pocket for the dollar to pay for the job. He was really sufferin' then."

He chuckled and then lapsed into silence, shuffling the papers in his hands.

"What have you got there?" inquired Bradford after a moment.

"Eh? Why—well, I've got a sticker of my own. A pretty bad one, too, I'm afraid. I was gettin' kind of desperate about it and the notion struck me to run in here and ask your advice. I don't know's I'd better, though, after all."

"Why not?"

"Oh, because I ain't sure it's a thing you ought to be mixed up in— for your own sake, I mean. You've just started to paddle your own canoe here in Denboro and it might not help you much to begin by heavin' rocks at the skipper of one of the biggest craft in the same channel."

"What's all this? Canoes and channels and rocks! What are you talking about, Ebenezer?"

Tagdett was still hesitating. Then he drew a long breath. "I guess," he said slowly—"yes, I guess I will tell you about it. Seem's if I must tell somebody. It'll be just between us two, and when you hear it I shouldn't wonder if you thought that was where it better stay."

He began his story, at first mentioning no names. In May of that year he sold a sideboard to a customer. This customer had commissioned him to find an American board, a good one, Sheraton type preferred. It must not be too long, nor too high; it must be a genuine antique, and of course of fine mahogany and pattern and in good condition. Price was to be a secondary consideration. He had been on the lookout and at last discovered what seemed to him precisely the article required. He had brought the sideboard to his shop; the customer had seen it and liked it. He had spent another two months "resurrecting" it and at last had delivered it to his patron. He had paid the original owner with his own money.

"That sounds all fair and square so far, don't it, Banks?" he went on. "Well, it sounded good to me—then. I'd found and delivered what my customer had been terribly anxious to get for a long spell, and what I thought—and still believe—is about the best sideboard of its kind I ever see. I had to pay two hundred and eight dollars for it, and I sold it to her—to this customer—for three hundred. Considerin' my two months' work on it and the double cartin' and all, I don't think that's a big profit; now, do you?"

"No. I should say it was a very reasonable one."

"Um-hum. So I figgered. Well, then this customer of mine she went away, shut up her house and cleared out for all summer. She hadn't paid my bill, but that didn't worry me much, though I could have used the money. Fur's that goes," he added reflectively, "I can usually use money. I'm funny that way—don't hardly ever have to set down and look at a fifty-cent piece and strain my brain wonderin' what I'll do with it...Well, now comes the trouble. Three weeks ago, this customer havin' come back home and opened up her house, I got reckless enough to write and ask if 'twould be convenient to send me the three hundred. And the next day after that I got a letter. Seems she doesn't want the sideboard after all. It's there at her house, or out in her barn where's she put it, and all I've got to do is send a cart up there and haul it away again. Sounds simple enough; if the three hundred was in one of the drawers and I could haul that away, too, 'twouldn't be."

"But—but she saw it in your shop, you say, and liked it and bought it at your price. I don't understand."

"Don't you? Neither did I, but I didn't lose much time tryin' to find out. I went right up to see her. And there's where I got my heaviest jolt. She explained everything—that is, everything but what would explain the explanation. She had decided that the board I sold her wasn't a genuine antique. She had strong doubts about it; always had had so—"

"Wait a minute. Did she express those doubts when she agreed to buy the board?"

"No. I told her then, just as I told her again when I went to her house after gettin' the letter, that I knew who had owned it, the house it was in and how long it had been there. She seemed satisfied; yes, and said she was."

"And you do know, don't you?"

"Know as well as a man in the secondhand business can know anything. I'll bet my Sunday go-to-meetin' clothes, hat and all, that that board is real all the way through, and all of a hundred year old besides."

"And you told her so again?"

"I spent two solid hours tellin' her. I might have been there yet if she hadn't called her hired girl to show me where the front door was, in case I got lost tryin' to find it. And after that I put in a lot of time tryin' to get the real reason for her shovin' the board back on my hands. I guess I have found that reason; yes, I guess I have."

"What is it?"

"She's bought another board, bought it up in Boston. It suits her better'n mine does. That's the meat in the clamshell."

Banks laughed. "If that's all," he said, "you're safe, Ebenezer. She may have bought a dozen others, but she'll have to pay for the one she bought of you."

Mr. Tadgett shook his head. Apparently this confident assurance did not hearten him greatly. "Um-hum," he grunted, "maybe so; but she vows she won't pay. The board's a jim-dandy. I could take it back into stock and hang on to it for a couple more year and then sell it, perhaps. But I need the money. Puttin' out the two hundred for it in the first place made my bank account shrink like a new flannel shirt in a rainstorm. I've been short as that shirt ever since. And that ain't all—no, sir, it ain't half all. The real point I stick on is away one side of the money part. She says, or as much as says, that I sold her a fake article. I never sold a fake, except as a fake, in my life. It hurts me to have her say such a thing and—and get away with it. I—well, I'm a secondhand junk dealer, I know; but by thunder mighty, I'm an honest one!" He struck the arm of his chair with his fist. His face was red and his voice shook with earnestness.

Bradford was stirred to indignation. "It's a shame, Ebenezer," he declared hotly. "She shan't get away with it. You let me handle this for you. I believe I can collect your three hundred."

Another shake of the head. "No," said Tadgett. "No; I'm much obliged to you, Banks, but you can't afford to meddle with it."

His friend misunderstood. "Don't worry about that," he said. "I'll be glad to do it for you for nothing. It sounds as if it might be fun; I think I shall enjoy it."

"No, no. You don't understand what I mean. You can't afford to meddle with it for your own sake. You don't know who this customer of mine is."

"I know who you are—yes, and what you are. That is enough."

"No, it ain't," said the other with a rueful grin. "Not in Ostable County. I'm a—well, I'm a pretty small herrin' in these waters and she's one of Denboro's pet whales. 'Twouldn't help you much, as a brand-new lawyer, to start in by fightin' Mrs. Cap'n Elijah Truman."

Bradford whistled. "Mrs. Truman!" he repeated. "Is that who it is?...Whew!"

"That's who. She's the whale. Well," concluded Ebenezer, rising to his feet, "the herrin' must be swimmin' home to supper. Much obliged to you for listenin' to my woes and tribulations, Banks. Good night."

He was at the door when Banks spoke again. "Ebenezer," he said, "I want a little time to think this over. In the morning you come in here again, will you?"

"No, I shan't. You keep right out of this, Banks. I shan't let you do anything but keep out of it."

"Then you won't come here to-morrow morning?"

"No."

"Very well, then I'll be in to see you. Good night."

That evening, for the first time, he did not tell his mother all that had happened at the office during the day. He said nothing of Tadgett's call and the latter's disclosures concerning the sale of the sideboard. Ebenezer had asked that the matter be kept secret and of course it must be for the present.

He did, however, ask some questions about Mrs. Truman. He knew the lady, as did every one in Denboro. Her house on the Old Ostable Road was one of the finest in the village. He remembered when it was built and he dimly remembered pompous old Captain Elijah, his strut, his tall hat and gold-headed cane.

Captain Truman had died two years after the house was built and his widow had gone abroad almost immediately. Abroad or in Florida or California she had lived much of the time since. Banks himself had been away at college and law school and, although he had often seen the Truman span and brougham on the street and occasionally had noticed Mrs. Truman's velvet bonnet and diamond earrings in the Truman pew at church on Sunday, he and she had not spoken.

Once, since his return to Denboro to live, he had met her by the door of the post office and had ventured to bow. His bow was acknowledged by a stiff little nod, but it was evident that she had no idea whatever as to his identity. There was a young woman in the brougham with her, and he had seen them together once or twice since. Mrs. Truman's granddaughter, he was told. Her name was Cartwright, so his informant said. Banks, with the appraising eye of youth, decided that she was a very pretty girl.

"Mother," he said at the supper table that evening, "do you know Mrs. Elijah Truman well? You ought to, I should think; her husband was father's partner."

Margaret looked up. "I know her, yes," she replied.

"You don't know her very well, I take it?"

"Not so very. She was Captain Elijah's second wife and he married her after your father had been dead a year or two. She and I don't call on each other, if that is what you mean."

"Why not?"

"Oh, I don't know. She doesn't call on many people here in Denboro. She is friendly with the Lathrops and the Badgers and Capt. Gustavus Hall's people."

"The rich crowd. I see."

"And she has some friends among the summer cottagers. She has been away so much that most of us haven't had many chances to be sociable with her."

"What sort of a woman is she?"

"I don't know exactly what you mean, dear."

"I guess you do. Sort of a newly rich, is that the idea? Who was she before she married Captain Truman?"

"Why—well, I don't know so very much about her, really. There are stories, of course. According to them she came from the South somewhere. Her first husband's name was Rodgers; he was killed in the Civil War. She married Captain Elijah in 1885 or thereabouts. The story is that she was keeping a sort of high-class boarding house in Boston. Elijah was one of her lodgers and he met her there. He was an old man when he married her. She was years younger than he."

"Humph! She must be sixty herself."

"About that; but the captain has been dead seventeen years or so."

"She has a barrel of money, hasn't she?"

"She must have a great deal; Elijah Truman was rated a very rich man—in his later years."

"Who is this girl I've seen with her, at church and out driving?"

Margaret smiled. "Now I begin to see why you are so interested."

Banks shrugged impatiently. "You are away off, Mother," he declared. "I am rather interested in the old lady—I'll tell you why some day, perhaps—but the girl isn't mixed up in it. I just wondered who she was."

"She is Maybelle's—that is, Mrs. Capt. Elijah Truman's granddaughter. She had a daughter by her first husband. Their daughter—seems to me her name was Daisy—"

"Maybelle and Daisy! Ran to flowery names in that family, I should say."

"—this Daisy married a man named Cartwright. Mrs. Cartwright died when her own baby girl was born. Then after two years or so Mr. Cartwright died. Mrs. Truman—she was a widow for the second time then—took her granddaughter to live with her."

"And she is the one I've seen with the old lady. What is her name?"

"Elizabeth—Elizabeth Cartwright."

Banks whistled. "There!" he exclaimed, with the air of one who has solved a puzzle, "I knew I had seen her before—long ago, I mean. Elizabeth Cartwright! Why, of course, I remember now. Don't you remember, Mother? Years and years ago it was. I was a kid—nine or ten, I should say—and you and I were down at the beach one Sunday afternoon. There was a little girl there with somebody, a foreign woman as I remember—a French nurse she was, probably—and this little girl was out on the end of Seth Nickerson's boat landing and fell off. I was on the pier, too, and I ducked over head first, as far as my waist, and fished her out by the scruff of her neck. That girl's name was Elizabeth Cartwright. You said it was, afterward."

"Yes. I remember it well enough."

"So do I"—with a chuckle. "And I remember that the nurse had hysterics first, and then gave the girl fits for falling in."

"Yes. She—the nurse, I mean—was very much frightened; principally, I guess, because of what Mrs. Truman would do and say to her when they got home. We all came back here to this house and dried Elizabeth's clothes and ironed her dress and made her as good as new. I doubt if her grandmother knows to this day what happened."

Banks was still chuckling. "She has grown up since then," he declared. "When I saw her the other day in the Truman carriage she was what the fellows would call a peach. Is she as snobbish and high and mighty as the old lady?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. She doesn't know me now, of course. But then, she knows very few Denboro folks. She has been away at school and all over the world with her grandmother. They're going to stay here all winter this time, I believe—unless Mrs. Truman changes her mind."

Banks asked many more questions. Elizabeth Cartwright's name was not again mentioned, but Mrs. Elijah Truman's was. When Margaret went up to bed she left her son in the armchair in the sitting room, smoking and apparently deep in thought. She bent over him and touched his shoulder.

"What is it, Banks?" she asked. "What have you got on your mind? What set you to cross-questioning me about Mrs. Truman? Come, tell me."

He shook his head. "Mother," he said, "I suppose anybody in Denboro who dared to say 'Dum' when Mrs. Captain Elijah said 'Dee' would be regarded as the complete darned fool, wouldn't he?"

"Why, what in the world—"

"Yes, he would. Still—I don't know. A lot of people must have wanted to say it and didn't dare and they might sympathize with the chap who did dare, especially if he came out on top. Anyway"—he gave a short laugh—"they would know who he was by the time the saying was finished." Then he laughed again and added, quoting a slogan which was almost new at the time. "It pays to advertise, so I've heard. This would certainly be advertising of one kind or another...No, no, Mother, I shan't tell you what I mean—now. Besides, I'm not certain yet that I do mean it. Good night."