Front matter

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AGATHA'S AUNT

AGATHA'S AUNT

By

HARRIET LUMMIS SMITH

Author of

OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS

INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1920 The Bobbs-Merrill Company

Printed in the United States of America

PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOK MANUFACTURERS BROOKLYN, N. Y.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I Boarders Wanted 1

II The Curtain Rises 18

III A Social Secretary 29

IV Complications 42

V Company Manners 57

VI Hephzibah Comes to Life 78

VII Day Dreams 94

VIII The Rescue 109

IX An Embarrassment of Riches 124

X A Confession 140

XI A Wilful Man Must Have His Way 155

XII Hephzibah Turns the Tables 170

XIII Congratulations Are in Order 184

XIV Confidences 196

XV Underneath the Bough 210

XVI Miss Finch Follows a Classic Example 221

XVII The Day of Judgment 235

XVIII Warren Gets a Tip 249

XIX The Worm Turns 264

XX The Day After 276

XXI Enlightenment 292

XXII Fellow Travelers 305

XXIII An Introduction 324

AGATHA'S AUNT

CHAPTER I

BOARDERS WANTED

It was too early in the season for lowered shades or closed shutters. The spring sunshine had taken possession of the big, many-windowed room, repaying the hospitality as other uninvited guests have been known to do, by its indiscreet revelations. In rooms much lived in, a rather endearing shabbiness is a familiar characteristic, suggestive, like a thumbed book, of homely comfort. The room in question had passed this stage and reached the shabbiness eloquent of poverty.

The paper on the walls was faded, and stained from a leak in the roof. The original carpet had been transformed into a rug that shrank annually and now showed threadbare areas, prophetic of gaping holes in the near future. The furniture, too, though of expensive make, had arrived at a point where a series of surgical operations seemed imperative. Yet with it all, a certain plucky defiance was evident in the shabby room. Pictures or calendars hung over the discolored spots on the wall, furniture arranged to conceal the weak spots of the carpet, a crocheted shawl thrown carelessly over the exposed entrails of a veteran armchair, a general air of putting the best foot foremost inevitably suggested that the dilapidated building sheltered youth, ardent and unconquered.

In the smallest chair the room contained, a rocking chair that creaked protestingly under its light burden, sat Miss Zaida Finch, darning a pink silk stocking. Miss Finch's print dress modestly concealed her diminutive lower limbs, her extremely small shoes scarcely peeping from beneath its hem. For all that the eye discerned, her anatomical structure might have been modeled after that of Mrs. Shem in a Noah's ark. Yet with no evidence to substantiate his certainty, any observer would have vowed that Miss Finch's painstaking toil was wholly disinterested. It was impossible to believe that the much-mended pink silk hosiery formed part of her wardrobe.

The industry of Miss Finch was spasmodic. One moment she plied her needle with an intentness indicating that her task absorbed her. And again she let the stocking drop into her lap, and lost herself listening to sounds overhead, footsteps, doors opening and closing, the murmur of voices. Once, rising, she tiptoed to the window and gazed for a long breathless moment at the touring car before the gate, the chauffeur puffing a cigarette with an arrogance characteristic of the driver of a seven-passenger Packard, who knows that at any moment a Ford roadster may round the curve ahead.

Despite occasional lapses Miss Finch was darning industriously when the voices overhead sharpened noticeably. A light staccato of high heels tapping the uncarpeted staircase was followed by the slamming of a door violently enough to shake the building. Miss Finch, groping vainly for the interpretation of these sounds, found her gaze drawn to the window as the Packard swept along the highway, its horn bleating an impassioned farewell.

The door at the rear of Miss Finch's chair opened emphatically, with such emphasis indeed, that the door-knobs parted company, one falling into the hall, the other projecting itself in the direction of Miss Finch as if with hostile intent. And close upon this demonstration a girl entered the room and flung herself into one of the ragged armchairs.

The owner of the pink silk stocking was revealed. It was all in keeping with her audacious color scheme. Her hair was obviously red, and instead of modestly disguising the fact, it used every known artifice to attract attention to itself, curling and crinkling and brazenly thrusting out tendril-like locks to catch the beholder's gaze. Her eyes should have been blue, according to all precedent, but instead they matched her hair, a daring reddish-brown, with yellow flecks like floating gold-leaf. Ordinarily her skin was creamy till the multiplying freckles of summer temporarily disguised its fairness, but at this moment some intense emotion dyed her crimson from her throat to the roots of her hair. Over a blue house dress she wore a sweater of vivid green, assumed, if the truth be told, not for the sake of warmth but to conceal her patched elbows. Her entrance into the room accentuated its faded dinginess and bleached Miss Finch to the color of ashes. Even the spring sunshine paled before her rainbow effect.

"Well, Fritz!" The girl used the incongruous nickname with the carelessness of long custom. "It's all over."

"All over!" Miss Finch echoed in alarm. The darning egg dropped from her lap and spun dizzily upon the floor, while its owner blinked rapidly as if the radiant presence in the armchair dazzled her eyes.

"Yes. That was Mrs. Leavett, the one who saw my advertisement in the Onlooker, and wrote and engaged board for herself and two children."

Miss Finch rolled her eyes heavenward. Under the matter-of-fact statement she scented calamity.

"It occurred to her that she'd like to see the place before she came. And now she's seen it, she's not coming. She says my ad was misleading."

"It was a very good advertisement, I'm sure," protested Miss Finch. "I didn't know myself how pleasant the place was till you read me what you'd written."

The girl laughed out. The naive defense had the effect of partly dissipating her anger and bringing an evasive dimple into view.

"I leave it to you, Fritz, if I told a single whopper. I said the rooms were large and airy, and I didn't state that the paper was peeling off the walls. I mentioned the lawn and the shade trees, and failed to add that the house needed painting. It is not the business of the seller, Fritzie dear, to call attention to any little defects in the article he is trying to dispose of. Mrs. Leavett overlooked that point. Not a business woman, evidently."

"The vines cover a good bit of the house anyway," commented Miss Finch resentfully. "What does a little paint more or less matter to a summer boarder?"

"Mrs. Leavett seemed under the impression that it mattered to her. She was so very snippy that at last I asked her if she didn't think that to be unpainted in these days was rather a mark of distinction. Since you didn't see the lady, Fritz, you can hardly appreciate the insinuating cleverness of that inquiry. The red, red rose has nothing on her. Such a lovely, fast-color carmine, warranted to go through a fainting fit without fading."

"If you're going to have boarders, Agatha," Miss Finch remonstrated, "you've got to keep a tight rein on your temper."

"I did, Fritz; I was preternaturally amiable till I saw that the game was up. Then I thought I might as well relieve my feelings. The woman seemed to take it as an affront that I wasn't my own grandmother. She said for a girl of my age to advertise for boarders was a piece of presumption, and she wanted to know if I didn't have a guardian—as if I were weak-minded."

Miss Finch's contemptuous sniff breathed sympathetic scorn.

"I'm not ashamed of being only nineteen. Everybody has to be nineteen some time, except the people who die in infancy. As I said to Mrs. Leavett, if you're too young, time will mend it. But being too old isn't so easily remedied."

"Was she old?" inquired Miss Finch suspiciously.

"Older than she wants any one to think, Fritz. She's the sort of woman who talks about her little son when he's a sophomore in college, smoking an enormous meerschaum." Agatha's angry color had subsided to a becoming pink, and her eyes were luminous with mischief. "I'm going to try the frank, open style in ads, since the other doesn't seem to work. I shall want your opinion on it, Fritz, so prepare to give me your undivided attention." She flitted to the writing desk and began scribbling on the back of a convenient envelope and Miss Finch utilized the pause to recover her elusive darning egg, dropping her thimble in the process. Before she could capture the latter runaway, Agatha was ready for her services as critic.

"Boarders wanted. A spinster aged nineteen, of uncertain temper, will accommodate a limited number of boarders at her country place, Oak Knoll. Rooms large and airy, special ventilation secured through openings in the roof. In case of rain, guests will be furnished with tubs to catch the drippings, without extra charge. Fine lawn kept in excellent order by the untiring efforts of two horses and a cow. View unsurpassed. Meals excellent provided the cook is kept in good humor by considerate treatment."

She nipped the handle of her pen reflectively. "Do you think it necessary to mention that the cook and the proprietor are one and the same?"

"Agatha," cried Miss Finch with the agonized earnestness of a literal mind, "you mustn't think of sending that to the paper. Taking boarders is a good deal like getting married. There's a whole lot you've got to keep dark, or you might as well give up first as last."

Her outburst terminated in a sniff. Immediately the tip of her pale, seemingly bloodless little nose became as red as a cherry, the instantaneous sequel of tears, with Miss Finch.

"You're so smart, Agatha," she quavered. "If only you'd sell this house and wash your hands of Howard and me, who haven't the least claim on you, you could go to the city and look around and like enough find a husband. There's plenty of men who don't mind red hair."

Agatha ignored the encouragement. "Howard is my brother."

"Just like children pretend in play. He's your stepma's son. There's not a drop of Kent blood in him, and not a mite of Sheldon in you. But instead of giving your mind to getting married like a girl needs to do in these days, you're all the time worrying about educating that boy."

"I'm going to send Howard to college if I live, I'd rather do that than have twenty husbands."

"Then if that wasn't enough," lamented Miss Finch tearfully, "here I am, a good-for-nothing cumberer of the ground, for you to fuss and plan for. Don't tell me! All the reason you keep this place is to have a home for me and Howard. And it ain't right or fair."

Agatha crumpled the advertisement inspired by the visit of Mrs. Leavett into an inky wad, and took aim at the spider-like blotch on the ceiling. Then crossing the room swiftly, she hugged the limp little woman to her heart.

"You'll make me cry myself if you're not careful. You want to deprive me of my family and my chaperon at one swoop, and turn me out into the world a solitary orphan, you heartless creature." She silenced Miss Finch's gurgled protests with a kiss. "Hush!" she said authoritatively. "There comes Howard on the pony. He mustn't know anything about this."

The beat of hoofs ceased abruptly and a boy's swinging step sounded on the porch. To save the trouble of walking ten feet to the door, Howard raised the nearest window of the living-room, and made an unconventional entry. He was a handsome lad of sixteen, and Agatha's idol. She had been as ready as most young girls to resent her father's second marriage, but all her childish hostility vanished at the sequel, the chubby little boy who was her stepmother's contribution to the family circle. She had longed for a brother with the passionate yearning of a lonely child, and just when she had given up hope, a brother was hers. Agatha's sense of proprietorship had grown with the years. Nothing irritated her more than the suggestion that the tie between Howard and herself was less binding than that of blood.

The boy drew three letters from his pocket, slapping them down on the table.

"You're getting to be pretty popular, Aggie. Every time I go to the village there's mail for you. Two letters yesterday and three to-day."

"How warm you look, Howard." Agatha pushed the boy's heavy hair back from his moist forehead. "You mustn't get overheated and take cold." She was deliciously maternal in her solicitude for the sturdy youngster who already topped her by an inch or two.

"I'll look warmer before the day's over. I'm going to tackle the garden now. If you'd ever seen summer boarders eat new green peas you'd know 'twas time to get busy."

Howard departed as he had come, and his sister, her face overcast, gave her attention to her mail. The first letter opened was flung petulantly to the floor.

"Woman wants to know how many bathrooms we have, and will I please send her the names of several former patrons as references. Worse than Mrs. Leavett."

"They're an unreasonable lot, summer boarders," acquiesced Miss Finch.

The second letter was as unsatisfactory, judging from the impetuosity of its flight across the room.

"She's the widow of a missionary and wants board at half rates, and the younger children not to count."

"I don't believe you've got the temper for running a boarding-house," commented Miss Finch. "You're as fiery as red pepper and next to the married state, keeping boarders calls for a saintly disposition."

Agatha prying open the third communication with a hairpin, vouchsafed no reply. But her perturbed air changed magically to breathless attention. Her eyes moved slowly down the typewritten page, her air of stupefaction increasingly in evidence. Checking herself with an impatient gesture, she started again at the beginning and read the letter aloud:

"'My Dear Miss Kent:

"'My attention has just been called to your advertisement in the current Onlooker. I can hardly hope that you remember me, for it is over twenty years since our last meeting, and at that time I was an insignificant urchin of twelve—'"

"Over twenty years," Miss Finch interjected, "and you nineteen last week."

"'I remember you distinctly, however, and your beautiful old place with its fine grounds and noble trees. When I explain that I am the son of John Forbes you will understand that my visit with my father was a memorable occasion. He died soon after, as you remember, but he often spoke of our week at Oak Knoll and his affectionate admiration for yourself.'"

A flicker of understanding illumined Miss Finch's blank face.

"I'm beginning to see daylight," she interrupted. "The man's fooled by the likeness of names. He thinks he's writing to your great-aunt, Agatha Kent. She'd be between sixty and seventy if she were living."

Agatha had already solved the puzzle. She nodded and read on, too interested to pause for discussion:

"'I have played in rather hard luck recently. I contracted a severe form of malaria in my South American trip last year which has resulted, strangely enough, in a loss of eyesight, only temporary, the doctors hope. For six months I have gone about with my eyes bandaged. At present the building up of my general health seems the most important step in my recovery and I wish to secure board in some retired country place with a bracing climate, like that of Bridgewater.

"'In case you were willing to burden yourself with a blind boarder, I should, of course, insist on paying more than the moderate rates mentioned in your ad. I should also wish to engage the services of some youth in the neighborhood who could serve as valet and companion. I could bring an attendant from the city but would prefer a country boy, who would not be continually pining for roof gardens and like diversions. His work will be exacting, of course, for no child is as helpless as I, but I will pay well in addition to his board and will try to make his labors as agreeable as possible.

"'I have written at length because I wish you to understand just what you are letting yourself in for, if you admit me to Oak Knoll. The remembrance of your benevolent face which even to my unobservant boy self seemed to express your kindly nature, is my only reason for thinking that possibly your answer will be favorable.

"'Yours very truly, "'Burton Forbes.'"

Mechanically Agatha folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. She spoke in a rapturous half whisper. "A blind man. If it had been planned on purpose, it couldn't have been more perfect. Please don't tell me I'm dreaming, Fritz."

Miss Finch rubbed her nose fretfully, a sign of perturbation. "Have you thought—"

"He can't see that the paper is peeling off the wall," Agatha continued ecstatically. "But he'll appreciate the rooms being large and airy. He won't worry because the house needs painting, but he can enjoy sitting under the shade of the trees. I can even feed him fried chicken while the rest of us are eating cod-fish gravy. It's an interposition of Providence."

Miss Finch was hectoring her nose again. "But how are you going to manage—"

"He wants a boy as an attendant," persisted Agatha jubilantly. "Howard is the boy. He'll pay him well, and pay me for his board. If only I'm not delirious. Oh, I want to jump and scream. Howard's next year in school is all provided for. And if Mr. What's-his-name would only stay blind till—"

"I guess you're forgetting one thing." Miss Finch raised her voice challengingly. "You ain't your great-aunt."

Agatha regarded the interruption with irritation. "Well!"

"It's her he wants to board with. He imagines she's a nice, motherly old soul, who'll pet him up and feed him up. It ain't likely he'd think of engaging board with a flighty young girl. I don't say you're not as competent as though you were sixty. But he wouldn't believe it."

The glow illuminating the girl's face flickered defiantly under this chilling blast of common sense, and went out, like a candle in the wind. She drew her arched brows into a meditative pucker and sat musing while Miss Finch, humanly complacent over having suggested a difficulty, gave her whole attention to her darning, leaving Agatha to wrestle with the solution.

"Fritz," the girl breathed at last, "do you believe in reincarnation?"

Miss Finch tried to look as if she understood the meaning of the word. With an adroitness for which few would have given her credit, she replied, "I won't say I do, and I won't say I don't."

"Well, it's true, Fritz. I am my own great-aunt."

"Land alive!" cried Miss Finch, startled into close attention.

"Mr. Burton Forbes wants to engage board for the summer with Miss Agatha Kent. Well, I'm Agatha Kent. He imagines that I'm a nice comfortable old lady with white hair and a double chin. Very well. It would be a hard heart that would disappoint a blind man in such a trifle."

"You mean," gasped Miss Finch, "that you're going to deceive him?"

"Heaven forbid. But I'm not going to undeceive him, Fritz. He assumed certain things about me. Let him keep his illusions, poor soul. He'll spend a happy summer with his father's old friend, and then go away and recover, I hope."

No trace of Agatha's shadowing perplexity remained. Her eyes had the mischievous brightness of a naughty child's. Miss Finch gazed aghast.

"He's bound to find out sooner or later. And no good comes of cheating anybody, least of all a blind man."

"You're not the stuff for a conspirator, I can see that," Agatha laughed. "You look positively frightened. But Howard will be delighted. He'll feel like the hero of a detective story."

The window by which her brother had made his exit was still open and Agatha took her departure in the same informal fashion. But little Miss Finch sat bowed in her chair, as if the responsibility for this newly hatched plot rested upon her narrow shoulders, and crushed her under its weight.

CHAPTER II

THE CURTAIN RISES

The composition of a suitable reply to Burton Forbes' request proved unexpectedly difficult. Agatha did not lack appreciation of the histrionic demands of her rôle. She suspected the late John Forbes of something more than a platonic admiration for her imaginary self and it was out of the question to write his son the matter-of-fact letter which would have sufficed for another blind man, desiring board in the country. As she composed laborious missives only to destroy them on the second reading, Agatha thanked heaven that the hardships of her lot had not included the adoption of a literary career.

The completed letter, however, so far met her exacting requirements that in satisfied contemplation of her intellectual offspring, she forgot the pangs attending its birth. With a naive complacency not unfamiliar among the craft, she read the masterpiece to Miss Finch:

"My Dear Mr. Forbes:

"Your letter, just received, both surprised and touched me. Your memory must, indeed, be tenacious if you recall me, for in the twenty years which have passed since your visit to Oak Knoll you have, I am sure, seen much better worth remembering than a quiet, old country woman the best of whose life is now its golden memories.

"I hardly need tell you that my door would be open to your father's son under any circumstances, and the fact of your blindness—which I sincerely trust will prove temporary—only makes you doubly welcome. Fortunately I know exactly the person for your attendant, a young friend of mine named Howard Sheldon. He is thoroughly reliable and the salary will be a great help to him, as he is ambitious for an education.

"Please let me know when to expect you. I am looking forward to renewing the friendship begun so long ago that it almost seems as if it must have been in another state of existence.

"Very truly yours, "Agatha Kent."

Miss Finch did not share Agatha's enthusiasm. Her pinched little face was wan and worried as she conscientiously did her best to dampen the satisfaction of the proud author.

"That letter gives me a dreadful upset feeling, Agatha. I don't know as I could put my finger on a downright lie, but it certainly ain't true."

"It is the truth and nothing but the truth, Fritzie. It is ridiculous for a little four-page letter to claim to be the whole truth. Take, for instance, the fact about his being doubly welcome because he is blind. That's truer than he has any idea of."

"'Golden memories,'" quoted Miss Finch with severity. "A young girl like you!"

"That's the best thing in the letter," cried Agatha, enraptured. "I don't know how I ever came to think of anything so clever. 'Golden memories,'" she repeated with the sentimental inflection she deemed appropriate. "Do you know, Fritz, I don't believe it's as hard to write books as the authors make out."

Disappointing as Miss Finch proved in the rôle of conspirator, Howard's enthusiasm largely compensated for her deficiencies. Howard was in his element. To share in a plot of this character was rapture beyond words. The only drawback to his happiness was the fact that Agatha had described him to his prospective employer as a reliable boy, ambitious for an education. Howard felt that to live up to such a character promised an insipid summer. It would have added a tang to existence had he been cast for a refugee or a cowboy. It was with difficulty that Agatha brought him to relinquish his determination to play some sort of part.

"I could pretend to be an awfully ignorant cuss, don't you know, Aggie. I could say 'betcher life' instead of 'yes,' and, 'not on your tintype' for 'no.'"

Yielding to his sister's eloquent representations, Howard reluctantly consented to confine himself to his normal mode of expression during Mr. Forbes' stay and bend all his energy toward furthering his sister's success in the impersonation fate demanded of her. His suggestions proved an almost startling range of ingenuity. Agatha was to complain frequently of rheumatic pains in her knees, and keep a cane handy for strolling about the grounds. Another point on which Howard placed great emphasis was the necessity of frequently mislaying her supposedly indispensable spectacles.

"He'll be sure to suspect something," insisted Howard, "if you don't keep losing your spectacles. Old folks always do. And when I find them and bring them to you, you must always say that they are the ones you use for looking far off and you want your reading glasses."

The exchange of several letters between Burton Forbes and his prospective hostess resulted in an arrangement entirely satisfactory from Agatha's standpoint. Her boarder was to make the trip from the city without an attendant. Howard would meet him at the station with the carryall and convey him to Oak Knoll, where Agatha would make him welcome as the son of a friend long dead. The possibility of Mr. Forbes' enlightenment through the interference of neighbors she had met with characteristic decision by disseminating the information that her home was to serve as temporary asylum for a blind gentleman, broken in health and with an unconquerable aversion to society. Without definitely reflecting on Mr. Forbes' mental condition, Agatha succeeded in conveying the impression that any one attempting to interview her blind boarder would do so at his own risk.

Youthful audacity, together with a daring peculiar to herself, carried Agatha triumphantly through the successive stages of preparation. It was not until Howard had actually driven to the station to meet the expected arrival that she began to appreciate her own temerity in committing herself to so reckless a scheme. To be an old lady for an entire summer, to be discreet and dignified—sufficiently so at least to deceive a blind man—began to seem to her a contract impossible to carry out. Her knees weakened under her. An abnormal acceleration of her pulses convinced her that she was more frightened than she was willing to admit. As the time approached for Howard's return, she was almost on the point of offering a prayer that Mr. Forbes had suddenly decided on a summer in Canada.

The carryall drawn by the leisurely bays came in sight just when apprehension was reaching the point of panic. Agatha strained her eyes. Howard occupied the driver's place and in the comparative obscurity of the back seat the outlines of a masculine figure were visible. Her throat dry and her forehead unpleasantly moist, Agatha went out upon the piazza to receive her guest.

Under ordinary circumstances Howard's passenger would not have seemed a formidable personage. In spite of the disfiguring blue goggles, his clear-cut features were distinctly prepossessing. Moreover, his air of helplessness would have appealed to the maternal instinct of any female five years old, and led her to constitute herself his protector. Only a guilty conscience accounted for the shrinking with which Agatha advanced to welcome him.

"How do you do, Mr. Forbes." She spoke in the repressed tones she imagined befitting age, and her fluttering heart imparted a suitable tremolo to the greeting.

Forbes snatched off his hat and put out a groping hand. His abundant brown hair, cut severely close, showed a well-shaped head. His voice, too, was in his favor.

"Have I the pleasure—"

"I am Miss Kent." Agatha took his hand and quickly released it. "Bring Mr. Forbes' suit-case, Howard. I suppose you'd like to go to your room, Mr. Forbes. Shall I help you?"

She put her hand through his arm to guide him, her face aflame. Yet her youthful zest for adventure was asserting itself and there was something contagious in Howard's delight over actually embarking on the anticipated conspiracy. Agatha's breathing steadied. She caught Howard's eye and flashed a smile at him. The experience was like a plunge into a mountain stream, exhilarating after the first shock was over.

"This is very good of you, Miss Kent," Forbes was saying as they ascended the wide staircase, side by side. "I shan't be quite so helpless as this when I've once got my bearings." His voice took on an interrogative note. "I hardly suppose you would have known me?"

Agatha threw him an appreciative glance. "I think it would be out of the question for any one who had known you to forget you."

"Really?" He seemed pleased. "But surely I have changed."

"In twenty years? Certainly. Even I"—she smiled in enjoyment of her own daring—"even I have changed since your last visit."

Howard, on the stairs behind them, coughed loudly by way of applause, but Agatha's complacency was destined to be jarred. "Don't make rash claims," the new arrival said severely, "I feel you're nothing but a girl."

"I—I—"

"At least that is how you impressed me the first time I saw you—the only time I've seen you," Forbes corrected, "as if you would never grow old."

Agatha made a quick recovery. "I try to keep a young heart," she replied demurely. "Now, Mr. Forbes, remember that when you get to the top of the stairs you turn toward the front of the house, and the door of your room is the first on your right."

The big front room for all its appalling shabbiness, was deliciously airy. Forbes stood between the open windows and drew deep breaths. "This is what I've been pining for without knowing it," he burst out. "I have a presentiment that this air is going to be just the tonic I need, and that I'll be seeing again in a week or two."

"I hope—so," lied Agatha with the jerkiness of one unused to falsehood. "Howard, get Mr. Forbes everything he needs and bring him down to the porch when he is ready, unless he would like to lie down." She withdrew sedately and then atoned for her unnatural repression by galloping down the stairs and falling upon Miss Finch, who, having viewed the arrival from a convenient window, had withdrawn to her own little rocking chair, a prey to lugubrious forebodings.

The panting Agatha revealed no traces of her late misgivings. "It's ridiculously easy, Fritz, and the greatest fun. I believe I'd have made a star actress. I honestly felt as old as the hills, exactly as if he were a young fellow I'd known years ago, when he was a little boy. I was almost tempted to smooth back his hair from his forehead—he has such a nice thoughtful forehead, Fritz—and imprint a benevolent kiss above his nose."

"Yes, I saw he was nice-looking," sighed Miss Finch. "Such a pity he can't see. I've often thought I wouldn't mind marrying a blind man or a cripple and sacrificing my entire life to making him happy. But I'm afraid you'd tire of it, Agatha."

"I'm sure I should. It makes me tired even to think of such a thing," admitted Agatha shamelessly. "But you don't get my point of view, Fritz. The kiss was to have been maternal or even grandmotherly. He thinks I am an old lady and in spite of everything, I regard myself from his standpoint. I never looked forward to a summer so much in all my life. It'll be like going to a play morning, noon and night."

Voices sounded on the stairs, a man's deep notes blending pleasantly with the fresh tones of a growing lad. Agatha seized Miss Finch's arm.

"Come out and meet him, Fritz. And I believe I'll begin calling you Zaida. You're considerably younger than I, you know. Why, what's the matter?"

Terror in her eyes, Miss Finch was resisting the friendly propulsion. "I'm afraid to go near him. I'll be letting the cat out of the bag, and I'm not going to have lies on my conscience even for you, Agatha."

With a laugh the girl released her. "Poor old Fritz, you never were intended for a diplomatic career. But you'll get used to it. Train yourself to think of me as some one venerable and stately, long, long past the follies of youth." She advanced to the door with a dancing step borrowed from Mrs. Vernon Castle as depicted on the screen, turned to kiss her hand to the crushed Miss Finch, and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. And presently, mingling with the composite fragrance of the garden and distant hay-fields, the appreciative nostrils of Mr. Burton Forbes differentiated the less esthetic but equally delectable odor of frying chicken.

CHAPTER III

A SOCIAL SECRETARY

In nineteen observant years Agatha had noted a business man's invariable interest in the local telegraph service, and the tendency of lovers to be dissatisfied with the mail facilities of the neighborhood. The concern manifested by Burton Forbes on learning that the Rural Free Delivery called at Oak Knoll but once a day, classified him definitely, in Agatha's estimation.

"You can always send Howard to the village for the afternoon mail," she suggested, the new warmth in her voice an unconscious demonstration of the truth that all the world loves a lover.

"Thanks, that's fine!" The brightening of Forbes' face quite offset his immediate conscientious warning that she was not to spoil him just because she was sorry for him.

As the Rural Free Delivery brought nothing of consequence on the morning following Forbes' arrival, Howard was despatched to the village after the mid-day meal, leaving Forbes in Agatha's care. Agatha conducted her charge to a creaking rocking chair, in the shadiest angle of the porch, and shoved a foot-stool near. "Now I'll get my knitting," she said blithely, "and we'll talk."

Forbes seemed delighted. "It's too good to be true," he murmured. "I thought they were extinct, the old ladies who sat knitting. It's like stepping into the heart of an old-fashioned story."

Agatha smiled tolerantly. "It's clear you're just back from South America. Up here everybody's knitting, young and old."

"But not like you," he insisted. "I am sure you have an air about it that differentiates your knitting from all this kittenish frolicking with balls of yarn." He turned his wistful face toward her as if it helped to visualize the picture, and then added, "Just the hour for confidences, isn't it?"

Agatha smiled at the dun colored wool in her lap. "A warm day, a cool porch, an old lady knitting, and a young man in love. Of course it's ideal for confidences."

He did not seem in any hurry to take advantage of the opening he had asked for. "I'm afraid I'm going to impose on you," he said, after so long a pause that she wondered whether he were planning to deny her charge. "Howard is a bright kid, and I'm sure he'll prove a satisfactory secretary, but there are a few letters I'd hate to dictate to a boy." He laughed with rather an engaging air of shyness as he added, "I imagine it won't be particularly easy to dictate them even to you."

"Of course not," agreed Agatha, with ready sympathy. "Love-letters seem one's own business more than almost anything in the world." His artless confidences had brought a lovely color to her cheeks. Practical as Agatha believed herself, she was romance-hungry, and it did not matter in the least that in this particular love-affair she was cast for a minor rôle. "And I'll read you her letters, too," she offered joyously. "It will save Howard some trying experiences. Howard's just at the age when he's horribly embarrassed by anything in the shape of sentiment."

"Thank you. I'd any amount rather you read them," returned Forbes gratefully. "But they won't be sentimental letters, at all. Howard could read them without finding a word that would bring a blush to his maiden cheek."

"Oh!" observed Agatha blankly, and knitted to the end of her needle without speaking. Apparently the path that had seemed so plain led nowhere, after all.

Forbes, too, seemed in no haste to speak. "Of course," he explained at last, "I'm very hopeful. If I make a complete recovery as the doctors tell me I'm likely to do, there's no reason why things shouldn't be as they were before."

Agatha laid down her knitting and regarded him fixedly, an upright crease between her brows. The tranquillity of his unconscious face gave the impression that she must have misunderstood him. "How were they before?" she asked bluntly.

Apparently he did not question her right to a categorical answer. "We had planned to be married in January till this came up. But of course I couldn't hold a girl like Julia when there's a possibility of my having to grope my way through life."

"No, of course not," agreed Agatha, with misleading calm. "But if she were enough in love with you to plan to marry you in January, I should suppose something would hold her, something you had nothing to do with."

There was a moment of rather tense silence. Then Forbes laughed out boyishly:

"You dear old soul," he cried, "you don't know how mid-Victorian that sounds. When you were a girl, women took all that sentimental stuff seriously; about sacrificing themselves for love, I mean. But you don't understand the modern girl. She's beyond that."

"I don't pretend to understand your Julia," agreed Agatha, her eyes aflame, "I don't want to."

Forbes laughed again, this time with a reservation in his mirth. "Look here," he said, "you mustn't criticize Julia, for then I can't talk to you about her, and that would be a deuced bore. And she's a queen. A girl of that sort is bound to know her value. Julia was really fond of me, not desperately in love as I was—as I am—that wasn't to be expected, but really fond of me and inclined to exaggerate ridiculously my small achievements. But of course it's out of the question for her to marry me if the rest of my life is to be a game of Blind Man's Buff."

"Per—perhaps so," Agatha stammered. One of her ready rages was coming on. She felt it distinctly. One familiar symptom was that her blood seemed boiling in her veins, and her ears felt hot and swollen. She had seen them before when she was angry, flaming like two danger signals, and tempering the redness of her hair. Her shaking hands made knitting quite impossible. "Of course people can't marry if they haven't the money to marry on," she succeeded in saying finally, in an unsteady voice, "but there's nothing to keep them from loving each other till they die, and having that comfort, anyway."

She had succeeded in making him very uncomfortable. She would have known that by the way the rocking chair was creaking as he squirmed, even if his astonished face had not borne witness to the facts in the case.

"It—it is not a question of money," he explained stiffly. "I have plenty, and so has she. We're not extravagant in our tastes, either of us. The thing that's out of the question—" He seemed to find a little difficulty in making it clear, after all, and floundered at this point. "You can't think of it," he protested angrily, "tying a girl like Julia, a beautiful, queenly creature, to a man who has to be led around like a poodle dog. God! I couldn't be coward enough to accept such a sacrifice."

"Oh, I understand, now." Agatha's anger was past the inarticulate stage. She pulled a needle from her knitting, and brandished it dangerously as she talked. "You mean that you wouldn't let her be engaged to you." The affected innocence of her voice was flatly contradicted by the bitterness of her eyes. "You just insisted that there shouldn't be anything more between you two till you were sure that your eyes were going to be all right again. Well, I tell you frankly that I think you've treated Julia brutally, and that she has a right to detest you."

Apparently Mr. Forbes was losing confidence in his ability to make the matter clear. He sighed patiently as he tried again.

"No, that isn't it. We were agreed perfectly on the subject. Love isn't quite so reckless a passion as it was when you were young, Miss Kent. Julia and I belong to a reasonable generation, tremendously matter-of-fact. She was really cut up over the whole affair, but she felt she owed it to herself to break the engagement since my future was so uncertain, and I felt I owed it to her to release her. So we were perfectly agreed, you see."

"Yes, I see." Agatha was glaring at him with the expression of a vixen. "Just as businesslike as if you had been planning to go into partnership to raise chickens, weren't you? And so that's what the modern girl is like. Dear me!"

The edge to her voice made her irritation sufficiently plain, and Forbes, with a gentle deference that touched her, changed the topic to one unlikely to combat her old-fashioned prejudices. They were discussing Thackeray and George Eliot when Howard returned. Swinging himself from his pony, the boy came clattering along the porch, and deposited a package of mail on his employer's knees.

"It's lucky I went over," Howard declared. "You've got a regular windfall, five or six letters beside the things with one-cent stamps."

In spite of Mr. Forbes' assumption of ultra-modern reasonableness, his countenance betrayed a boyish ardor that added to Agatha's resentment against the recreant Julia. She took possession of the letters, saying to her brother, "You'd better put the pony up, hadn't you, Howard? I'll attend to Mr. Forbes' mail."

Her boarder only waited for the beat of the pony's hoofs to tell that Howard was out of hearing, before he leaned toward her, his face pathetically eager. "Is there one from her?"

"What's the post-mark?"

"She's probably at the Briercliff Manor, this week. She writes a striking hand, not the old-time idea of feminine, but full of character and strength. You'll always recognize it after you've seen it once."

Unfortunately it appeared that Agatha's education in this important branch of knowledge was not to begin immediately. There was no letter from Julia. This fact established, the light went out of Forbes' face, and it remained blank during the reading of several communications of varying degrees of interest. For the first time he seemed an embodiment of all the pitiful helplessness of the blind.

"I suppose," he ventured hesitatingly, when she had finished, "that you're too busy to take a letter for me to-day. Got to go on with that knitting, haven't you?"

Agatha longed to say yes. In her present mood, to transcribe an impassioned letter to the object of Forbes' regard, seemed well-nigh intolerable. Inexorably she forced herself to reply that she was not in the least busy. "I'll get Howard out of the way by sending him to the garden," she added. "He'll be perfectly willing to change jobs with me."

Howard, who had the average boy's aversion to the use of a pen, bore out her statement and joyfully agreed to picking peas in place of acting as an amanuensis. He went his way, favoring her with an almost ribald wink, a natural reaction from the profound respect he was now required to show her. With an expression that would have befitted Queen Elizabeth, when signing the death-warrant of Lady Jane Grey, Agatha began her task.

Forbes' mood, though disappointed, was not reproachful. His pale face flushing slightly at the novel experience of giving voice to such tender sentiments in the presence of a third person, he dictated the letter with only those pauses necessary to enable Agatha to keep pace with him.

"My Dearest Girl.

"The afternoon mail has just been brought from the village, and I was disappointed at not receiving a letter from you. Disappointed I am, but not surprised, for I am sure that wherever you are, you will have little time to yourself unless you take it by main force, so to speak. That is the penalty I pay for being in love with one so charming.

"I wish you could look in on me here, at the home of my father's old friend, Miss Agatha Kent. Oak Knoll is a fine old place. The house is spacious, comfortable and homelike, the last characteristic doubtless due to the personality of the owner. As Miss Kent is good enough to write this for me, I must wait some other opportunity to tell you how delightful I find her. Her type is disappearing, unluckily, which makes me all the more ready to congratulate myself on this chance of renewing a friendship which might almost be regarded as an inheritance.

"The troublesome eyes pained me a little last night, but lying awake was not altogether fruitless, as in the stillness I could bring your dear face before me almost as vividly as if I saw it in the flesh. To-day I feel much better. I am convinced that this wonderful air is going to make me over, and then in a few weeks I shall again have a right to indulge myself in the dreaming of those dreams which need no Daniel to interpret them."

Forbes' deep voice came to a halt at this point. He turned his face toward Agatha, the involuntary movement showing that his blindness was not of long duration, and smiled with that winsome boyishness which made it impossible to believe him past thirty.

"I believe I'll take my pen in hand for the wind-up, if you please, Miss Kent. I think I can manage a line or two, without making it illegible."

She brought the sheet to him, put the pen in his hand, and indicated where he was to begin to write. And then suddenly as she watched him, the outline of his fine profile was blurred by angry tears. Something in his expression gave her an inkling of the tenderness compressed in those few straggling lines, and all for the girl who had "owed it to herself" to break her engagement because of his misfortune.

"She owes it to herself to break with him," reflected Agatha, "but she doesn't owe it to him to make it final, and give him a chance to get over it Oh, no! He can go on to the end of his life dreaming about her, and making love to her, and feeding her vanity by his devotion. And then he calls that deliberate heartlessness reasonable, and makes himself believe that she's the type of the modern girl. The cat!"

Agatha's righteous indignation was getting the best of her. She said the last two words aloud.

"Beg pardon!" Forbes turned, showing a puzzled face.

"The cat is rather near the chickens," Agatha explained. "If you'll excuse me, I'll run down and drive her away." She started at a pace which would have been reckless for rheumatic knees, recalled herself, and slowed down till beyond his hearing. Then she stood quite still and stamped her foot upon the gravel like a restive horse, till she felt better.

When she returned, flushed but calm, the letter was completed and folded. "Haven't any asbestos envelopes, have you?" questioned Forbes, trying to make a joke out of his bit of sentiment. "I've made it hot stuff, I assure you." And then he acknowledged that an ordinary envelope would probably retain his ardent effusion without bursting into flame, and Agatha wrote the name she already hated, eying each letter malevolently, as she set it down:

Miss Julia Studley Briercliff Manor Briercliff, New York

Howard took her aside that night to thank her for relieving him of an obnoxious task. "It's the only part of the work I mind, writing those darned letters. Does he make 'em long?"

"A great deal too long," said Agatha, "and I don't blame you for hating that job. It's rotten."

CHAPTER IV

COMPLICATIONS

For a week Forbes' spirits were fitful. Morning after morning, the Rural Free Delivery brought a variety of offerings, and disappointment along with the rest. Each afternoon Howard rode to the village, and though he never returned empty-handed, he might as well have done so, since he failed to bring the right letter. Had it not been for Agatha, Forbes' depression might easily have become serious. She spent with him all the time she could spare, even shelling peas and whipping cream upon the porch within arm's length of his chair. Whatever opinion he expressed, she promptly disagreed. She railed at modern institutions. She professed unbounded contempt for the modern girl. She was as prickly as a chestnut burr, as puckery as an unripe persimmon, as ruffling as a January gale. But she gained her point. Forbes did not mope.

In that week of waiting, she wrote at his dictation three letters to Julia, all of them ardently tender, and quite uncomplaining. Though he confessed to disappointment over not hearing from her, he did not seem to question that it was her privilege to keep him waiting her pleasure. His humility aroused Agatha to a fury of protest. She dotted her "i's" as if she were stabbing the paper, and crossed her "t's" with a sweep, like the slash of a knife. Her valorous instinct to champion the cause of the under dog had never been so constantly in evidence.

The table at Oak Knoll was extremely good that week. In addition to distracting Forbes' thoughts by continually opposing him, Agatha concentrated her attention on making him eat. The fundamental common sense, underlying like granite her girlish caprices and audacity, assured her that an aching heart was in some mysterious fashion relieved by a full stomach. The price Forbes had insisted on paying for his board had seemed to her excessive, and now it justified her in trying her choicest recipes. And while Forbes' mood would have made it easy for him to be quite indifferent to what was set before him, thanks to these tactics he ate with a rather shamefaced relish, and assured Agatha that cooks of her sort had all been born before the Civil War.

At the end of a trying week, the looked-for letter arrived. Agatha herself took it from the mail box at the end of the long drive, and she eyed it as if it had been a new species of noxious insect. Though she had never seen Julia's chirography, she instantly recognized it, even without the aid of the post-mark. The letter was a long one, evidently, for it had called for double postage.

Agatha walked rapidly back to the house, congratulating herself that her duties would be less onerous, at least till the stimulating effect of this letter had worn away. She beckoned to Howard, who was escorting Forbes about the grounds on his morning constitutional, and despatched him on some unnecessary errand, while she took his place at Forbes' side. "It's come," she said briefly.

Though terse, the statement was quite intelligible. Forbes put out his hand eagerly, and she saw it was trembling. She gave him the letter, conscious of a pity that had a mixture of contempt. "Shall I read it to you?" she asked.

"Why, of course. What am I thinking of! Shall we go to the porch? It seems like a fat fellow, and I don't want to keep you standing."

Agatha put her hand through his arm and steered him in the direction of the house. She noticed the shadow on his face had lifted. A little color had come to his cheeks, and his sensitive mouth seemed on the point of smiling. She felt that she despised his weakness in letting himself be played upon by the caprices of a heartless girl, but at the same time, she wanted to cry. And Forbes, as if suspecting her mood, entertained her as they walked, by making fun of himself and of the rapture he could not hide.

"What do you think, Miss Kent? Will you be equal to reading this to me every day till the next one comes?"

"I suppose," said Agatha with resignation, "that I can stand it if you can."

"Oh, there won't be any difficulty as far as I'm concerned. In fact, if my eyes were normal, I should probably read it several times a day, whenever I had a minute to spare. But I haven't the nerve to impose on you to that extent."

"Heaven forbid!" cried Agatha devoutly, and he broke into hilarious laughter. Agatha reflected that if this was the result of falling in love, the longer that catastrophe was postponed, the better.

Forbes had been quite correct in saying that Julia's letter would not be sentimental. Howard could have read it without the slightest embarrassment. She apologized casually for not having written earlier, and by way of explanation gave a list of her engagements for the past two weeks, a device which lent her letter the effect of the society column in a Sunday newspaper, and accounted for the double postage. The names of several men appeared frequently in her record, and it was evident that Forbes was not the only one of his sex to recognize her charm. She even quoted one or two compliments she had received, as if certain of his sympathetic pleasure in her popularity, and his expression as he listened seemed to justify her confidence.

On the last page of the fifteen, Julia detached herself from this fascinating theme, and touched on his affairs. She was glad he was better and she was sure he must enjoy Oak Knoll. She thought those old colonial houses simply lovely and from his description, Miss Kent was a perfect dear. It was good of him to write so often for she was always glad to hear, and she was very cordially his friend, Julia.

Agatha laid down the letter, hardly able to keep back the scornful comment that rushed to her lips like a hemorrhage. She was rather in hopes Forbes would say it himself. The shallowness of the missive, its unabashed vanity, its colossal selfishness were so apparent to her intelligence that she half expected to have Forbes break the silence by congratulating himself on his escape from marrying Julia in January. With this thought in her mind, the fatuous complacency indicated by Forbes' tone came in the nature of a shock.

"She's a bit irregular as a correspondent, but when she does write, you see it's some letter."

Agatha digested this in silence.

"You can gather from this," continued the unconscious Mr. Forbes, "how popular she is. Wherever she goes, she's the center of attention."

Since it gave him pleasure to continue in this strain, and Agatha was not really hard-hearted, she composed herself to listen till Howard's return. But the sight of her brother's slender figure in the distance was peculiarly welcome. By dint of vehement gestures, she induced him to exchange his sauntering gait for a run, and so shortened her ordeal perceptibly.

Howard looked from the frowning girl to the smiling young man with perplexity. For several days Forbes' depression had weighed on the boy's spirits. And now Mr. Forbes was grinning like a chessy cat, and Aggie looked mad enough to bite a nail in two. Howard continued to stare till by a sweeping gesture Agatha indicated her wish to be left to herself. For some time Forbes had gone through the program of exercise his physician had outlined with a listlessness which proved his lack of interest. Now as Howard suggested continuing their interrupted walk, he clapped the boy on the shoulder, seized his arm and the two went off laughing. And Agatha, recalling his boast that he was a representative of a generation remarkable for its reasonableness, smiled sourly and significantly after his departing figure, and asked herself whether all men were fools, or only the nice ones.

In her valiant effort to sustain Forbes' spirits, Agatha had for some days neglected her household duties, and she profited by his temporary accession of cheerfulness to despatch a number of pressing duties, aided by Phemie Tidd, the daughter of a neighboring farmer. The most notable characteristic of Phemie was her stupidity, and though Agatha had sometimes found this trying, in the present emergency she derived satisfaction from the certainty that nature had rendered it impossible for Phemie to find out anything on her own initiative. Whether she was positively weak-minded or not was a question on which the community did not agree, but under careful supervision she accomplished rather more work than would have seemed possible, considering her mental equipment.

As there was no immediate prospect of another letter from Julia, Howard was excused from his afternoon trips to the village, and left to discharge his secretarial duties unassisted. For this reason Agatha was several hours late in learning an important bit of news. It was approaching noon on Friday when she came out upon the porch flushed and weary, after a strenuous morning, and dropped into a chair near that which Forbes was occupying. Though the young man was alone, his mood was evidently cheerful. As she approached him, his smile challenged her attention, and she pondered with frank amazement on the extraordinary effect of Julia's inane letter.

"It's Miss Kent, isn't it?" Forbes looked boyishly pleased over having guessed correctly. "I am beginning to enjoy some of the perquisites of blindness. I can recognize the footsteps of all of you. Do you know you walk with wonderful lightness for a woman of your age?"

Agatha immediately resolved to begin wearing a pair of Howard's slippers, which could be kept on only by dragging her feet.

"I've been wanting to see you all the morning," continued Forbes light-heartedly. "I've great news for you. We're going to have company."

"Company!" Had Forbes' sense of hearing reached the stage of acuteness he fondly imagined, he would have recognized instantly a note of wildness in Agatha's exclamation.

"Had a letter this morning from a pal of mine, fellow I knew in college. He's coming to-morrow to spend Sunday with me."

"To spend Sunday!" Even though Forbes was unable to perceive the frozen horror of Agatha's countenance, her appalled tone convinced him that something was wrong. His smile gave way to an expression of anxiety.

"It won't inconvenience you to put him up, will it, Miss Kent?"

Agatha found herself unable to reply. Her castle in the air was about to topple. A friend of Forbes was coming, and his would be as eyes to the blind. Through him Forbes would learn that the house was in need of painting and shingling and papering, that the furniture was in all stages of dilapidation, and that she herself was not an elderly lady with a motherly interest in youth, but a mere girl with a surprising facility in falsehood. And while these agonized forebodings flitted through her brain, Forbes was offering dismayed apologies.

"I beg your pardon a thousand times. I should have realized—Of course, this isn't a boarding-house, but the fact that you advertised for boarders, misled me, don't you see? If Warren's coming is going to put you out at all, I'll have Howard telegraph him at once."

Agatha came to herself. There was risk, of course, in granting permission for his friend's visit, yet anything was better, even discovery, than that she should appear inhospitable. Her cheeks grew hot as she recalled his generosity and saw him confused and apologetic over having asked a friend to solace his loneliness for a week-end.

"Indeed you shall do nothing of the kind," she said with authority. "You didn't understand me. I'm only sorry not to meet your friend. I expect to be away over Sunday."

"Oh, but that's bad. I particularly wanted Warren to see you. We might telegraph him to make it Sunday week."

Agatha vetoed the suggestion. It was better that Mr. Warren should come as he had planned. "And besides," she added with swift return of her normal audacity, "if he is here you won't miss me so much."

"I shall miss you under any and all circumstances, dear lady." Forbes' air of animation had returned, and it was so great a relief to see him smiling again, that she resolutely shut her eyes to the pitfalls ahead.

"I shall get a girl from the neighborhood to do the cooking," explained Agatha. "And Miss Finch will mother you all in my place."

"But not in your way." Forbes had a confused but unflattering impression of Miss Finch, due to the fact that she never dared trust herself to converse with him for more than a minute at a time, for fear of making some unfortunate revelation. "And I'm sorry," he ended regretfully, "that Warren's not to taste your cooking."

"Oh, Hephzibah is exactly as good. I trained her."

"Good Heavens! You don't mean there's a living woman with a name like that."

"Oh, do you think Hephzibah an odd name? It wasn't uncommon when I was a girl." Agatha felt that she had taken leave of reason as well as of principle. "Hephzibah Diggs," she repeated thoughtfully. "I suppose it would have rather a quaint sound to any one not used to it."

"It's a name for the vaudeville stage," said Mr. Forbes with conviction. He returned to the subject of Agatha's other substitute. "I suppose Warren will have a chance to get more of an impression of Miss Finch than I have succeeded in doing, for he'll have his eyes to help him out. All I have been able to discover is that she never finishes her sentences."

"She's shy with men, poor girl," said Agatha, and then as he looked puzzled, "Of course she seems quite elderly to you, but to me she's only a girl."

Forbes whistled softly, shaking his head. "A blind man would credit you with immortal youth, and convict her of never having been less than middle-aged. I begin to believe that eyesight is misleading."

Agatha broke away from him before her mood of reprehensible recklessness should have implicated her still further. Then in the seclusion of her own room, she wept. "It's bad enough to stretch the truth when I positively can't help it," she told herself, "but this morning I simply wallowed in falsehood. And now I must live up to Hephzibah Diggs. Why couldn't I have called her Mamie Thompson? It's all the fault of that atrocious Warren person, and I wish something would happen to him on the way down. I suppose it's too much to hope for a railway accident, with only one passenger killed, but that would serve him exactly right."

Agatha's courage did not revive until she undertook to prepare Miss Finch for the responsibilities which would devolve upon her in the absence of the mistress of the house. Her pale eyes became unnaturally prominent as Agatha explained.

"Agatha, I can't. I'd go through fire and water for you, but I can't have a lie on my conscience. At my age I've got to prepare for death, any day, and I can't be loading my soul down with mortal sin."

"Oh, Fritz, don't be so foolish. It's not necessary to lie." Agatha's conscience gave a twinge like an uneasy tooth, as she recalled her entirely gratuitous inventions of the morning. "All you have to do is to keep from telling the truth."

"You can do it all right, you're so quick-witted, but I have to have time."

Agatha had an inspiration. "If he says anything you don't know how to answer, pretend you're hard of hearing. And make him keep repeating it over till he gets tired, or you've thought of something to say."

Miss Finch showed no inclination to rejoice over this simple solution of her difficulty. Her thin nose reddened as abruptly as if it had been pinched, and her eyes filled.

"I know I'm going to make a mess of things. I've felt from the start that no good could come of cheating a blind man. And after you go to-morrow—"

"But I'm not really going, Fritz. Somebody must do the cooking. I shall be in the kitchen, and my name will be Hephzibah Diggs."

"Hephzibah Diggs!" Miss Finch repeated, appalled. "You're going to be somebody else?"

"Only till Mr. Warren gets out of the house."

"And you picked out that name yourself, just for the fun of it?"

Agatha reddened under her old friend's accusing gaze. "I had to have some name," she protested weakly.

"You didn't have to have that. It almost looks to me as if you were getting where you took pleasure in deception."

As this only echoed Agatha's self-accusation, she exclaimed, "The idea!" with an air of indignant protest.

"It keeps me awake nights," Miss Finch continued mournfully, "the way things are in this house. It seems as if there might be an explosion any minute. You're young and light-hearted, Agatha, and you can't understand my feelings."

"Can't I, though," mused Agatha, as her old friend tottered toward the house. "And what's more, I shouldn't wonder if the explosion came off in just about twenty-four hours."

CHAPTER V

COMPANY MANNERS

Agatha took leave of Forbes about two hours before Warren's train was due. She had worked valiantly most of the morning to render the room he was to occupy approximately presentable. She had patched the worst places in the carpet, provided two chairs with seats of cretonne, and brought all the pictures from her own quarters to help disguise the defaced condition of the guest-room walls. Her feeling of dissatisfaction with the result, rather than her labors, had tired her, and she had no heart for making the most of the dramatic possibilities of the farewell. In her faded print dress, with a dusting cap drooping limply over one ear, she presented herself on the porch, hastily drawing on a kid glove, her sole make-up for her rôle.

"Well, good-by, Mr. Forbes. I'm going now."

Forbes took her gloved hand in both his. "I hope you'll have a delightful week-end," he said cordially. "Nobody deserves it more."

"I'm not anxious to get my deserts," Agatha assured him with truth, and then to head off inconvenient questionings, "Give my apologies to Mr. Warren, and say that if it had been possible I would have been here to receive him myself. But I am sure that Miss Finch and Hephzibah between them will make you perfectly comfortable."

She released her hand and pulling off her glove as she went, betook herself to the kitchen, where Phemie was still washing the dishes from the mid-day meal. Left to herself, Phemie could be trusted to stretch that uninspiring task over the better part of the afternoon. Thanks to Agatha's presence, the splashing at once became animated.

Deprived of the stimulating companionship of his elderly hostess, Forbes decided to accompany Howard to the station. From the kitchen window Agatha watched the carryall pass and recalled the sensations with which she had first seen Forbes approaching in the same shabby vehicle. Perhaps her present apprehensions would prove as groundless as those. Agatha whistled a martial tune, as she beat up her cake, and sought diversion in addressing Phemie with that disregard of grammatical precedent to be expected from a girl named Hephzibah Diggs.

The usual number of loungers was in evidence at the Bridgewater station, and the approach of Howard and his passenger was the signal for animated comment. The rumors Agatha had been at such pains to disseminate had taken on new and startling details as the village gossips rolled them under their tongues. It was stated on indisputable authority that Forbes had been the victim of sunstroke during his South American sojourn, and that this had left him blind and with his mind permanently affected. Another equally authoritative version pictured him the slave of an appetite for liquor and accounted for his presence at Oak Knoll by the fact that the village was "bone dry." All the rumors agreed, however, in emphasizing Forbes' aversion to society, and though Howard was surrounded and questioned as soon as he stepped on the platform, it was not till the train was in sight that any one ventured to approach the vehicle where Forbes sat alone.

Howard, absorbed in the responsibilities connected with the recognition of Mr. Warren, failed to notice the intrusion on Forbes' privacy, but a number of other people were more observant. For once the arrival of the four o'clock express had a rival in the public interest. The unconscious Forbes was the target for a dozen pair of curious eyes, as Jim Doolittle slouched toward him.

Jim paused by the carryall and looked Forbes over with the agreeable certainty that he could make his scrutiny as prolonged and insolent as he pleased, without being called to account. Then as the noise of the approaching train warned him to make the most of his conversational opportunities, he ventured a remark: "How do you find yourself to-day?"

Forbes' face showed no change of expression. Though Jim's nasal tones reached him distinctly, it did not occur to him that he was the object of solicitude. Jim waited vainly for a reply, and then, spurred to persistence by his grinning audience, he tried again, this time lifting his voice to a bellow, as if Forbes were deaf as well as blind. "Air they treatin' you right out to Kent's?"

Forbes turned with a start. "Beg pardon! I didn't know you were speaking to me."

"You're stayin' out to Kent's ain't you, for the summer? Folks say you came for your health."

"Yes." Forbes spoke stiffly, sharing the impression of most men who have always been robust, that illness is a disgrace. "The doctors advised a change of air."

"And does Aggie Kent take good care of you?"

The formality of Mr. Forbes' manner became more pronounced. "Miss Kent," he replied, with marked emphasis on the prefix, "has made me most comfortable."

"Glad to hear it, glad to hear it," Mr. Doolittle assured him affably. "Seems as if takin' boarders was pretty risky for anybody of her age."

Forbes' irritation deepened. "Miss Kent is perfectly capable and extremely vigorous. I believe she could tire me out."

"Yes, I shouldn't wonder," Jim agreed, rather to Forbes' annoyance. "And I guess Zaida Finch steadies her down when there's a chance of her doin' something flighty."

As this suggested to Forbes the weakening of his hostess' intellect through age, necessitating the guardianship of Miss Finch, he contented himself by a disdainful silence. The approach of Howard with a stranger in tow checked further conversational angling on Jim's part He tore himself away with a genial, "See you later," to which Forbes responded by a non-committal grunt. But he forgot his annoyance as Warren shouted his name, coupled with those abusive epithets with which his sex are wont to disguise sentiment toward one another.

Mr. Ridgeley Warren took an unaffected pleasure in his own society, which as a rule proved contagious. He was an inveterate talker, noisy, slangy, in every way Forbes' antithesis. Warren admired Forbes' dignity, and Forbes found diversion in Warren's flow of spirits. And beneath this mutual admiration was one of those steadfast affections which springing up between two men is more lasting, in nine cases out of ten, than the love between men and women.

It was fortunate that the staid bays knew the way home, for though Howard sat with the lines in his hands, he left to the horses all responsibility for keeping to the road, and turning at the right crossing. Warren told stories steadily all the way, and roared his appreciation of each. Howard laughed too, and Forbes shared their amusement, though less boisterously. Though the horses moved with deliberation, the five-mile drive seemed short.

As they turned up the driveway at Oak Knoll, Forbes said with the pride of a proprietor, "Fine old place, isn't it?"

"You bet," agreed Warren, his eyes upon one of the splendid oaks which had given the place its name. Then beyond, he caught sight of the house, and he leaned forward for a better look. "House been standing for some time, from appearances."

"Built by Miss Kent's grandfather," Forbes replied boastfully, "and she's well on to seventy. I imagine the house is a hundred years old."

Warren, staring at the sagging roof of the old building, looked as if he could easily believe it, but unaware of his lack of enthusiasm, Forbes continued: "I'm sorry you're not going to see Miss Kent, as she's away for over Sunday. You'd fall in love with her on sight."

Warren shrugged his shoulders. "Seventeen is nearer my style than seventy. Can't you trot out some pretty girls for me to fall in love with?"

"I'm afraid Miss Finch is all we can offer you in the way of feminine society, old man, and I've found her 'uncertain, coy and hard to please.' But you always had a way with the ladies. You might do better."

The carriage stopped at the door. Howard alighted and possessed himself of the visitor's suit-case. Miss Finch, who from the window of the living-room had watched their leisurely progress along the driveway, appeared on the porch, prepared to do her duty as hostess if it killed her. Miss Finch's nose was red and her lips were blue. Despite the warmth of the mild summer day, her teeth chattered.

Warren's hilarious air had disappeared with his first view of the dilapidated country house where his friend was spending the summer. His introduction to Miss Finch completed his undoing. He stared at the tremulous little figure in silent stupefaction. What on earth was Forbes doing in this tumbledown building with two old women for company? And the extraordinary part was that Forbes seemed contented with his quarters. Warren ascended the stairs to his room, trying to make up his mind how to handle the situation. He had an uneasy feeling that his friend was being imposed on.

The appearance of his quarters confirmed his worst apprehensions. Warren looked around him, shook his head, and rejoined Forbes on the porch, feeling the necessity of immediate action. But Forbes' air of tranquillity made him hesitate. After all, if Forbes himself were satisfied, that was the main thing.

He broached the topic cautiously. "I judge your friend, Miss Kent, isn't what you'd call opulent."

"Hardly, or I shouldn't be here. She advertised for boarders. Some one was reading me a few of the promising ads from the Onlooker, and I recognized her name. You see I visited her once when I was a boy, and I've always remembered the beauty of the place."

"Trees are fine," agreed Warren with reserve. "But the buildings all seem rather seedy. Need paint badly."

"Do they?" Forbes spoke indifferently. "Paint is the least of my troubles."

"I suppose so. But say, Forbes, are you sure it's a good thing for you to be cooped up here all summer with two old hens?"

He had fancied he was being tactful, but to his surprise Forbes seemed irritated.

"You haven't seen Miss Kent. If you had, you'd know that she's a regular beef, iron and wine combination."

"If she's like Miss Finch," Warren was beginning, when Forbes interrupted him with such spontaneous laughter that he dropped his sentence unfinished.

"She's about as much like Miss Finch as a collie pup is like those Teddy bears the kids lug around. She's an old lady in years, but otherwise she's as young as you or I. She's so full of vitality that you can't be near her ten minutes without feeling braced up. She's like a mountain breeze."

"Pity a woman of that sort didn't marry," commented Warren dryly.

"That's what my old dad thought. Miss Kent was his first love, and he stayed single on her account till he was well on to forty."

"Maybe that's why you're ace high with the old lady. She's trying to make up to the son for turning down the father."

"Can't say, I'm sure. I imagine it's her disposition to be kind to the crippled and disabled and generally good-for-nothing."

His tone was suddenly bitter, and Warren's look sharpened. "How's Julia?" he asked with seeming irrelevance.

"Julia's well and enjoying herself." Forbes' manner seemed to defy his friend to criticize, and Warren, who would have enjoyed nothing better than expressing his opinion of Julia, changed the subject abruptly. If Forbes liked this gone-to-seed place and the society of old women it was no concern of his. Queer how differently men were affected when their love-affairs went wrong. Some took to drink and some were women-haters. With Forbes it had developed a craving for the atmosphere of an Old Ladies' Home. Every man to his taste.

Supper partly dissipated Warren's concern. The dining-room was as rusty as the rest of the house. Miss Finch at the head of the table looked tinier and more frightened than ever. The girl who waited on the table was, without exception, Warren decided, the most unattractive specimen of youthful femininity he had ever come across. But the supper was unique. As Warren ate, his high spirits returned. Old Forbes knew what he was about, after all. A homely waitress need not trouble a blind man. Warren was almost inclined to believe that he himself could put up with the sight of Phemie's vacant face for the rest of his life, if he could be sure of three such meals every day.

In the relief from his anxiety regarding Forbes, Warren turned his attention to Miss Finch. She looked so helpless over all his jokes, that he realized the necessity of strict literalness in dealing with her. "I suppose you've known Miss Kent for a long time," he said by way of beginning.

Miss Finch paled over the shock of being addressed, but answered with unusual promptness, "Yes, ever since she was a teething baby."

In an instant she knew what she had done even before Forbes, turning a perplexed face in her direction, asked, "But you're the younger of the two, are you not?"

Miss Finch opened her mouth like a newly-landed fish, and closed it again without speaking. The device Agatha had suggested and which she had mentally dismissed as "acting a lie," thrust itself upon her recollection, and she clutched it with the avidity of the desperate. Putting her hand to her ear with the immemorial gesture of the deaf, she quavered, "What did you say?"

"I asked if you weren't the younger of the two. Miss Kent said to me the other day that she thought of you as a mere girl."

"I didn't quite catch what you said," faltered Miss Finch, but before Forbes could again repeat his inquiry, Phemie created a diversion. She had taken the water pitcher to refill it, and as she advanced to the kitchen door, her tray extended before her, she looked back. It was characteristic of Phemie to walk in one direction and look in another. Agatha was beginning to congratulate herself on having at last eradicated this tendency, but she had not reckoned on the effect of a handsome and lively young man on Phemie's susceptible temperament. As she turned for another look at Warren, Phemie's tray came into collision with the door and the pitcher, overturning, broke in fragments.

As was inevitable, every one turned to look. Warren, who was in range of the door, saw it open, apparently of its own accord. A figure stood in the passageway, fairly dazzling in its effect after the gray tints of Miss Finch, the subdued tan and tow of Phemie. His eyes drank in the colorful apparition for some ten seconds and then a rounded arm closed the door. Phemie picked up the fragments of the broken pitcher, and tearfully withdrew.

Miss Finch sat through the remainder of the meal without tasting a morsel, waiting in an agony of apprehension for Forbes to ask her again whether she was older or younger than Miss Kent. She might have spared her anxiety, for Warren's flow of conversation gave no chance for settling such minor perplexities. Warren was one of the men to whom the propinquity of a pretty woman is as stimulating as champagne. He did not think it probable that the apparition in the kitchen could hear his witticisms, but he assumed that she must realize who was responsible for the hilarity at the supper table. And even without this confidence, he would probably have talked and jested in the same breezy fashion, this form of responsiveness to beauty being instinctive with him rather than deliberate.

The moment he was alone with Forbes, Warren broached the subject engrossing his thoughts. "Burton, you have my sympathy. You don't know what you're missing. Under this roof there's as pretty a bit of flesh and blood as ever wore petticoats. Take it from me, she's a peach."

"Phemie?" exclaimed Forbes. "The waitress?"

Warren's derisive yell effectually settled Phemie's claims. "Gosh, no! That girl would stop a clock. This one was out in the kitchen, but I could see her peeking through after the smash-up."

"Oh, yes," exclaimed Forbes, recollecting. "I know. That's Hephzibah."

Warren positively staggered. "Lord, forbid," he ejaculated piously, "she can't be."

"She is, though, Hephzibah Diggs."

Again Warren's stentorian tones shattered the peace of the night. He used his first spare breath in announcing his intention to get a nearer view and see if a girl named Hephzibah Diggs could possibly be the beauty she had seemed. The announcement of this intention rendered Forbes uneasy.

"You let Hephzibah alone," he warned his friend. "These self-respecting country girls think themselves as good as anybody—they are as good as anybody. And I'm responsible to Miss Kent for your behavior."

"I don't want anything of the girl except to see her by daylight. She's not too self-respecting for that, is she?" And then seeing that Forbes was really annoyed, Warren dropped the subject of Hephzibah, though without the least alteration in his intentions.

It did not prove so easy as he had anticipated to get a satisfactory view of the girl whose face, glimpsed in the half-light of the previous evening, had seemed so alluring. At breakfast time Phemie met with no accident, and though Warren watched the swinging door that led to the kitchen with the alertness of a cat at a rat hole, it swung open and shut without revealing anything more seductive than a corner of the kitchen table. The day was warm, but the outside kitchen door remained obstinately closed, and on the rare occasions when it opened, it was Phemie who emerged.

Warren was not a man who readily surrendered. Indeed, difficulties were likely to stiffen a careless desire into adamantine resolution. When his watch showed noon and Hephzibah Diggs continued invisible, he decided it was time to take matters into his own hands. He rose from his chair on the porch stretching his sinewy length lazily. "I believe I'll walk about a bit," he said, "and work up an appetite for dinner. With meals like these, a man wants to be able to do himself full justice every time he sits down to the table."

"You ought to try Miss Kent's cooking," boasted Forbes. "She trained this girl, and she does well, but she's not a patch on her teacher."

Warren's stroll took him no farther than the kitchen door. He ascended the steps jauntily and knocked. After waiting vainly for an invitation to enter, he decided to assume that it had been spoken, and pushing the door ajar, he walked in.

Over in the corner Phemie was chopping something in a wooden bowl, but in spite of the insistent tapping of the knife upon the wood, he was hardly conscious of her existence. A girl stood at the table rolling out biscuit, and her sleeve turned back almost to the shoulders, revealed a faultless arm, white and rounded and tapering to the finger-tips. She turned her head at his step and he thrilled with amazed pleasure. His glimpse of the previous evening had not been misleading. Indeed his impression had fallen short of the actuality. He was looking at the handsomest young woman he had ever seen.

Mr. Ridgeley Warren did not lack self-confidence. His momentary silence was due to wondering admiration, not to any doubt of his power to please. With smiling self-possession he advanced into the room. In her corner Phemie chopped on steadily, without removing her fascinated eyes from his face. Hephzibah—it was preposterous that this radiant creature should be encumbered with such a name—continued to roll biscuit.

"You seem busy here," remarked Warren in his most ingratiating manner. "Don't you want an assistant?"

He was sorry to discover that the voice of Hephzibah Diggs was not in accord with her bodily perfection. She talked through her nose and that fact impressed him so painfully he almost lost the force of her reply, "Guess me and Phemie kin manage."

"I'm quite a little cook myself," continued Warren, saddened but not discouraged. "In my last place they said my parboiled cauliflower beat anything they had ever tasted. And my string-bean parfait has become popular in the best New York restaurants."

Phemie's delighted gasp was his sole applause. Hephzibah Diggs gave her attention to her biscuits.

Warren seated himself on one corner of the immaculate table and began to talk with his customary volubility. His remarks took the form he imagined would please a country farmer's daughter, lacking the rudiments of education. He soon realized, and with some irritation, that he was making an impression on the wrong girl. Phemie chortled joyfully over her chopping. Hephzibah Diggs listened as if it were against her principles to smile.

She brought three eggs from the pantry presently and broke them in a workmanlike manner, whites in one bowl, and yolks in another. "Got to have three more," she said to Phemie in that unpleasant nasal voice which helped to reconcile Warren to her continued silence.

A little flicker of triumph crossed Warren's face. Her sending Phemie for eggs was obviously a ruse to be alone with him. When Phemie had departed on her errand, with obvious reluctance, he leaned toward Hephzibah, his smile so confident that it was almost a smirk. She looked up with a directness rather disconcerting and he reflected that her eyes even in a face like Phemie's, would have given her a certain claim to beauty.

"I don't like men folks hangin' 'round when I'm busy." Her speech, it appeared, was as direct as the gaze of those adorable, reddish brown eyes.

"Then what do you say to a little walk when you've finished your work?"

"I ain't got the time."

"You mean you've got another fellow up your sleeve, don't you? Say, let's give him the slip. You ought to be nice to me after I've come so far to see you."

She turned her attention again to the cooking, drawing her arched brows into a frown. He noticed with approval that her beauty lost nothing of its distinction by her look of ill temper. But perhaps that was because the ill temper was a make-believe.

He leaned toward her persuasively, losing his head a little in her proximity. His pulses quickened. He thought he had never seen anything prettier than the way her hair crinkled away from her creamy neck. It occurred to him that he would like to kiss the cheek whose vivid freshness seemed an invitation to such temerity. Country people were primitive and direct. With a girl of the type of Hephzibah Diggs, a kiss was simply a natural expression of admiration.

As his lips brushed that blooming cheek, she reached for the bowl containing the egg yolks. She did not look in his direction as she flung the contents in his face, but her aim was true. He sprang to his feet with a gasp and a sputter. There was an incredible quantity of that sticky yellow stuff, matting his hair, dripping from his eyebrows, trickling in sickening streams down his neck.

"You little vixen. Does this stuff spot?"

Hephzibah ignored his inquiry. Warren backed away, laughing nervously, his mood divided between anger with her and shame for himself. Then panic seized him at the thought of encountering Phemie and he took a hasty departure, mopping himself with his handkerchief as he ran.

Howard had driven Miss Finch to church and Forbes was alone on the porch. "You didn't walk far," he said, recognizing his friend's step.

"No—o. Had an encounter with a wasp. I'll be down in a minute when I repair damages."

He hoped Hephzibah would not tell Miss Kent of the episode, but he decided to take the chance, and suggested to Forbes his coming up again in two or three weeks. To his surprise Forbes was not enthusiastic.

"It was awfully good of Miss Kent to take me in," he explained, apparently forgetful of the advertisement which was responsible for his presence at Oak Knoll. "And I don't want to bother her with too much company. I think she finds it upsetting to have strangers around, and it's not singular when you come to think of it. For all she's so wonderful, she's really getting to be an old lady."

CHAPTER VI

HEPHZIBAH COMES TO LIFE

Miss Kent's company at breakfast Monday morning was an agreeable surprise to Forbes, his pleasure chastened only by his regret that Warren had left on the late train the previous evening. "I particularly wanted you to meet him," Forbes complained. "If I'd known you were to be back so early I should have insisted on his staying over."

"It's only the young who can make a good impression at breakfast," Agatha responded. "Old people need twilight and candles." She raised her eyebrows in the direction of Howard, who was indicating his approval of her answer by a soundless show of spirited applause.

"I'd risk the impression you'd make any hour in the twenty-four," rejoined Forbes gallantly. "But it is too late now. Serves Warren right for being in such a rush to get back to his confounded business. Tell us all about your good time, Miss Kent."

"I didn't have one." Agatha felt the statement to be indiscreet, but her imagination was not equal to lending any glamour to her nightmare of a Sunday.

"You didn't enjoy yourself?" Forbes' voice indicated sympathetic surprise. "Why, what was wrong?"

"I didn't say I was going away to enjoy myself. I didn't expect to. You took that for granted."

"I see. One of those formal visits that are even more deadly than formal calls, because they're longer."

"And it turned out worse than I expected." Agatha was finding a certain melancholy pleasure in speaking her real sentiments. "Because I had a disagreeable encounter with a perfectly obnoxious person. But it's over, thank heaven, and I don't want to talk about it."

This topic being tabooed by mutual consent, it was natural that Forbes should begin to talk about Julia, as a theme eminently calculated to cheer the despondent, and lend interest to the most tedious hour. Agatha, listening, realized that her week was to be a hard one. It was time for Forbes to expect another letter from Julia, and of course Julia would not write so promptly as he expected, and it would be increasingly difficult to keep him in good spirits. Over her coffee Agatha laid plans for distracting her boarder's thoughts from his elusive correspondent.

Her apprehension proved correct. That afternoon Howard was sent to the village to do one or two little errands for his employer, and incidentally to get the mail. The next day the same program was followed and the third brought no change. And meanwhile the arrival of the Rural Free Delivery wagon was daily awaited with an anticipation not justified by results.

Agatha starting down the long driveway one morning, as the fateful hour approached, saw Forbes and Howard on ahead, evidently bound on the same errand. Before she could turn back, Howard caught sight of her and abandoning his charge, he came toward her on the run.

"You were starting for the mail, weren't you, Aggie? Would you mind taking him along while I see if I've got a rat in my trap?" Then dropping his voice to a scornful undertone, "He's got to go himself because he's expecting a letter from his girl, and can't wait for it to be brought up. See?"

Agatha accepted the commission without comment. She joined Forbes, and taking his arm, guided him the length of the shaded drive. Neither had much to say. Forbes was evidently bracing himself for possible disappointment and Agatha was not in a talkative mood. They had hardly reached the main road before Agatha's observant eyes detected in the distance a significant cloud of dust. "He's coming," she said with a reservation in her tone intended to warn her companion not to be over-sanguine. "We won't have long to wait."

The wagon approached and halted. The driver produced a miscellaneous assortment of letters and one good-sized package, the latter he scrutinized as if reluctant to part with it. "Do you know anybody around here," he brought out with irritating deliberation, "by the name of Diggs—Hep—Hephzibah Diggs? Ain't that a name for your life?"

Agatha gazed at him wild-eyed, incapable for the moment of speech.

"It's addressed to Oak Knoll," the speaker continued. "But I thought mebbe there was some mistake. I never knew any Diggses in these parts."

Agatha recovered herself and extended her hand. "Yes," she said hurriedly. "It's all right. I'll take it."

The mail-carrier surrendered the collection. "You're getting to have quite a raft of boarders," he commented affably. "Feller has to have his wits about him to keep track of so many new names." He clucked to his horses and the wagon rattled on.

Oblivious to her responsibilities as temporary post-mistress, Agatha stood quaking. To her guilty conscience the significance of the mail-carrier's inquiry was unmistakable. He had never heard of a family in the vicinity named Diggs. He assumed that Hephzibah was a summer boarder. Agatha did not doubt that Forbes was pondering these extraordinary facts, and that his first words would demand an explanation. With hanging head she waited for him to begin his cross-examination, but his voice when he spoke was anxious rather than peremptory. "Well?"

Agatha gasped. "I—why—you see—"

"You know her handwriting, don't you?" asked the lover. "I'm not sure where this letter will be posted."

Agatha reflected that love is sometimes deaf as well as blind. So engrossed was Forbes in his own anticipations that the compromising conversation with the mail-carrier had made no impression on his consciousness. After a hasty survey of the handful of letters, Agatha announced in a stifled voice that there were two letters for Forbes, but neither seemed to be from Julia. Her face betrayed an emotion due not to the tragedy of Forbes' disappointment, but to the discovery that there was a letter as well as a package, addressed to Hephzibah Diggs. That young woman, the fantasy of a day, had taken on a terrifying vitality. There was no way of estimating her possible activities. Agatha's emotions were those of Frankenstein when he discovered that his monster was alive.