Neither Mary nor the Captain nor Mr. Hamilton slept much of the few hours until daylight, and Captain Shadrach, who was devoured with curiosity concerning the plans, would have asked particulars before breakfast, but Mary would not listen to questions. It was not until breakfast was over and they were back in the store that she consented to discuss the subject.
The safe was reopened and the books and papers spread out upon the desk. Mary took up one of the sheets of paper; it was covered with rows of figures in her handwriting.
“Now,” she said, “it seems to me that the first thing is to find out exactly where we stand. When I say 'we,'” she added, with a nod of great importance, “I mean 'we,' because, as I told you last night, I am a silent partner in the business now.”
“Don't seem to be so terrible much silence,” observed Shadrach dryly.
“Hush! Another remark of that kind and I shall set you to sweeping out, Uncle Shad. Now, Uncle Zoeth, according to the books this is what we owe.”
She read from the paper in her hand.
“That is the total, Uncle Zoeth, isn't it?” she asked. Zoeth groaned and admitted that he cal'lated it was nigh enough.
“Yes. But this,” holding up another sheet of paper, “is what is owed us, and it is almost as much as the other.”
It was Shadrach's turn to groan. “'Tis if we could get a-hold of it,” he muttered. “The heft of the gang on that list ain't got a cent and the bulk of the rest of 'em wouldn't have if they paid what they owed.”
Mary nodded determinedly.
“There are some that can pay,” she said. “Jeremiah Clifford, for instance. According to the books he owes us over a hundred and ten dollars and part of the account is three years old. Mr. Clifford owns property. He can't be a poor man.”
The Captain sniffed. “His wife owns the property,” he said. “Every stick's in her name. Jerry Clifford's got enough, but he loves it too well to let go of it. Mean! Why, say! In the old days, when fishin' schooners used to run from South Harniss here, Jerry he was owner and skipper of a little hooker and Solon Black went one v'yage with him. There was another fo'mast hand besides Jerry and Solon aboard and Solon swears that all the hearty provision Jerry put on board for a four-day trip was two sticks of smoked herrin'. For two days, so Solon vows, they ate the herrin' and the other two they chewed the sticks. That may be stretchin' it a mite, but anyhow it goes to show that Jerry Clifford don't shed money same as a cat does its hair.”
Zoeth put in a word.
“He says he'll pay pretty soon,” he observed plaintively. “He's been sayin' it for over a year, though.”
“Humph!” grunted Shadrach. “There's only a difference of one letter between 'sayin'' and 'payin',' but there ain't but two between 'trust' and 'bust.'”
Mary spoke. “Never mind,” she said. “I shall see Mr. Clifford myself. And I shall see some of these others, too. Now about our own bills—those we owe. I have a list of the principal creditors. Mr. Green's firm is one of them; we owe them most of all, it seems. I think I shall go and see Mr. Green myself.”
“For the land sakes, what for?” demanded Shadrach. “He knows how we're fixed, Zoeth wrote him.”
“Yes, but I want to talk with him, nevertheless.”
“But what for? You ain't goin' beggin' him to—”
“I'm not going begging at all. When I talked with him at the Howes' he, not knowing in the least who I was or that I was your niece, expressed sympathy for Hamilton and Company and wished there were some way of helping us out of our trouble—something he could do, you know. I'm not sure there isn't something he can do. At any rate, I am going to see him. I shall start for Boston Monday morning.”
Zoeth ventured an observation.
“He'll be considerable surprised to see you, won't he?” he said.
Mary laughed. “I think he will,” she replied. “Surprised and a little embarrassed. But I imagine his embarrassment will make him all the more anxious to be of service to me, and that's what I want from him—service.”
Of course the partners asked hundreds more questions concerning the plans. Mary's answers were still disappointingly vague. Before she could tell just what she meant to do, she said she must be sure, and she was not sure yet. A great deal would depend upon her Boston trip. They must be patient until she returned from that.
So they were patient—that is to say, Zoeth was really so and Captain Shadrach was as patient as it was his nature to be. Mary was absent nearly a week. When she returned she had much to tell. She had visited Mr. Green at his office on Commercial Street. His surprise and embarrassment were all that she had prophesied. He offered profuse apologies for his blunder at the Howes'.
“Of course, if I had known of your relationship to Captain Gould and Mr. Hamilton,” he began, “I should never—Really, I am—I assure you I hadn't the slightest idea—”
He was floundering like a stranded fish. Mary helped him off the shoals by taking the remainder of his apologies for granted.
“Of course you hadn't,” she said. “But I am very glad you told me, Mr. Green. It was high time I knew. Don't say another word about it, please. I have come to you to ask advice and, perhaps, help of a sort. May I have a little of your time?”
Mr. Green seized the opportunity thus offered. Indeed, she might have time, all the time she wanted. Anything in his power to do—and so on. Being a bachelor and something of an elderly beau who prided himself upon making a good impression with the sex, it had annoyed him greatly, the memory of his mistake. Also he had been distinctly taken with Mary and was anxious to reinstate himself in her opinion. So his willingness to atone was even eager.
“As it happens,” he said, “I am not at all busy this afternoon. I can give you the rest of the day, if you wish. Now what can I do for you?”
Mary explained that she had come to speak with him concerning her uncles' business affairs, his house being Hamilton and Company's largest creditor. She told of her investigations, of the condition in which she had found the accounts, and of her determination to remain at South Harniss and work for the upbuilding of the concern.
“Of course I am not a business person like yourself, Mr. Green,” she said. “I am only a girl. But I worked in my uncles' store and, in a way, managed it for two years or more before I came to Boston to school. Beside that I have talked during these last few days with some of South Harniss's most prominent people—permanent residents, not summer people. From what they and others tell me I am convinced that the sole reason why my uncles' business has fallen behind is because of a lack of keeping up to the times in the face of competition. Everyone likes Uncle Zoeth and Uncle Shadrach and wishes them well—they couldn't help that, you know.”
She made this assertion with such evident pride and with such absolute confidence that Mr. Green, although inclined to smile, felt it might be poor judgment to do so. So he agreed that there was no doubt of Shadrach's and Zoeth's universal popularity.
“Yes,” went on Mary, “they are dears, both of them, and they think everyone else is as honest as they are, which is a mistake, of course. So some people impose on them and don't pay their bills. I intend to stop that.”
She evidently expected her listener to make some comment, so he said, “Oh, indeed!”
“Yes,” continued Mary. “I intend to stop their trusting everyone under the sun and I shall try my hardest to collect from those they have already trusted. There is almost enough due to pay every bill we owe, and I believe two-thirds of that is collectible if one really goes after it.”
“And you will go after it, I presume?”
“I most certainly shall. You are smiling, Mr. Green. I suppose it sounds like a joke, a girl like myself making such statements about things men are supposed to understand and women not to understand at all. It isn't a joke in this case, because I think I understand my uncles business better than they do. I think I can collect what is owed us, pay what we owe, and make money there in South Harniss. But to do that I must have time and, by and by, credit, for we need goods. And that is what I came to talk to you about.”
She had brought with her copies of the Hamilton and Company trial balance, also a list of the firm's debtors and creditors. These she put upon the desk before Mr. Green and ran a finger down the pages with explanatory remarks such as, “This is good, I know,” “This can be collected but it may take a lawyer to get it,” or, as in the case of 'Rastus Young's long-standing indebtedness, “This isn't worth anything and shouldn't be counted.”
“You see,” she said, in conclusion, “we aren't in such a VERY bad state; it isn't hopeless, anyway. Now here are the accounts we owe. Yours is the largest. Here are the others. All these bills are going to be paid, just as I said, but they can't be paid at all unless I have time. I have been thinking, thinking very hard, Mr. Green—”
Green nodded. “I can see that,” he put in, good-naturedly.
“Yes. Well, this is what I want to ask you: Will you give us six months more to pay the whole of this bill in? I don't think we shall need so much time, but I want to be sure. And if at the end of two months we have paid half of it, will you give us credit for another small bill of goods for the summer season, so that we may be stocked and ready? The summer is our best season, you see,” she added.
Mr. Green nodded. Her businesslike manner he found amusing, although he by no means shared her confidence in the future.
“We shall be very glad to extend the time,” he said. “You may remember I told you the other evening that so far as our house was concerned, we should probably be willing to sell your uncles indefinitely, for old times' sake.”
His visitor frowned.
“We are not asking it for old times' sake,” she said. “It is the new times I am interested in. And please understand this isn't sentiment but business. If you do not believe what I ask to be a safe business risk, that one your firm would be justified in accepting from anybody, then you mustn't do it.”
Mr. Green hesitated. “Suppose I do not accept that risk,” he said; “what then?”
“Then I shall go and see some other creditors, the principal ones, and make them similar propositions.”
“And suppose they don't accept?”
“I think they will, most of them. If they don't—well, then there is another way. My uncles own their house and store. They have been thinking of selling their property to pay their debts. I should hate to have them sell, and I don't believe it is necessary. I have been talking with Judge Baxter over at Ostable—I stopped there on my way to Boston—and he suggested that they might mortgage and raise money that way. It could be done, couldn't it? Mortgages are a kind of business I don't know anything about. They sound horrid.”
“Sometimes they are. Miss Lathrop, if I were you I shouldn't sell or mortgage yet. I am inclined to believe, judging by this balance sheet and what you say, that you have a chance to pull Hamilton and Company out of the fire, and I'm very sure you can do it if anyone can. Are you going to be in the city for a day or two? Good! Then will you let me consider this whole matter until—say—Thursday? By that time I shall have made up my mind and may have something to say which will be worth while. Can you come in Thursday afternoon at two? And will you? Very well. Oh, don't thank me! I haven't done anything yet. Perhaps I shall not be able to, but we shall hope for the best.”
Mary went straight to Mrs. Wyeth's home on Pinckney Street and once more occupied her pleasant room on the third floor. In spite of her determination not to care she could not help feeling a little pang as she walked by the Misses Cabot's school and remembered that she would never again enjoy the privileges and advantages of that exclusive institution. She wondered how the girls, her classmates, had felt and spoken when they heard the news that she had left them and returned to Cape Cod and storekeeping. Some would sneer and laugh—she knew that—and some might be a little sorry. But they would all forget her, of course. Doubtless, most of them had forgotten her already.
But the fact that all had not forgotten was proved that very evening when, as she and Mrs. Wyeth and Miss Pease were sitting talking together in the parlor, Maggie, the maid, answering the ring of the doorbell, ushered in Miss Barbara Howe. Barbara was, as usual, arrayed like the lilies of the field, but her fine petals were decidedly crumpled by the hug which she gave Mary as soon as she laid eyes upon her.
“You bad girl!” she cried. “Why didn't you tell me you were in town? And why didn't you answer my letter—the one I wrote you at South Harniss? I didn't hear a word and only tonight, after dinner, I had the inspiration of phoning Mrs. Wyeth and trying to learn from her where you were and what you meant by dropping all your friends. Maggie answered the phone and said you were here and I threw on my things—yes, 'threw' is the word; nothing else describes the process—and came straight over. How DO you do? And WHAT are you doing?”
Mary said she was well and that she had been too busy to reply to Miss Howe's letter. But this did not satisfy. Barbara wanted to know why she had been busy and how, so Mary told of her determination to remain in South Harniss and become a business woman, Barbara was greatly excited and enthusiastic.
“Won't it be perfectly splendid!” she exclaimed. “I only wish I were going to do it instead of having to stay at that straight-up-and-down school and listen to Prissy's dissertations on Emerson. She told the Freshman class the other day that she had had the honor of meeting Mr. Emerson when very young—when SHE was young, she meant; she always tells every Freshman class that, you know—and one of the Freshies spoke up and asked if she ever met him afterwards when he was older. They said her face was a picture; I wish I might have seen it. But do tell me more about that wonderful store of yours. I am sure it will be a darling, because anything you have anything to do with is sure to be. Are you going to have a tea-room?”
Mary shook her head. “No,” she said, laughing. “I think not. There's too much competition.”
“Oh, but you ought to have one. Not of the ordinary kind, you know, but the—the other kind, the unusual kind. Why, I have a cousin—a second—no, third cousin, a relative of Daddy's, she is—who hadn't much money and whose health wasn't good and the doctor sent her to live in the country. Live there all the time! Only fancy! Oh, I forgot you were going to do the same thing. Do forgive me! I'm so sorry! WHAT a perfect gump I am! Oh, dear me! There I go again! And I know you abhor slang, Mrs. Wyeth.”
“Tell me more about your cousin, Barbara,” put in Mary, before the shocked Mrs. Wyeth could reply.
“Oh, she went to the country and took an old house, the funniest old thing you ever saw. And she put up the quaintest little sign! And opened a tea-room and gift shop. I don't know why they call them 'gift shops.' They certainly don't give away anything. Far, far from that, my dear! Daddy calls this one of Esther's 'The Robbers' Roost' because he says she charges forty cents for a gill of tea and two slices of toast cut in eight pieces. But I tell him he doesn't pay for the tea and toast alone—it is the atmosphere of the place. He says if he had to pay for all his atmosphere at that rate he would be asphyxiated in a few months. But he admires Esther very much. She makes heaps and heaps of money.”
“Then her tea-room and gift shop is a success?”
“A success! Oh, my dear! It's a scream of a success! Almost any day in summer there are at least a dozen motor cars outside the door. Everybody goes there; it's the proper thing to do. I know all this because it isn't very far from our summer home in Clayton—in the mountains, you know.”
“So she made a success,” mused Mary. “Were there other tea-rooms about?”
“Oh, dozens! But they're not original; hers is. They haven't the—the something—you know what I mean, Esther has the style, the knack, the—I can't say it, but you know. And you would have it, too; I'm perfectly sure you would.”
Mary was evidently much interested.
“I wish I might meet your cousin,” she said.
“Why, you can. She is here in Boston now, buying for the summer. I'll phone her and we three will lunch together tomorrow. Don't say you won't; you've just got to.”
So Mary, rather reluctantly, consented to make one of the luncheon party. Afterward she was glad that she did, for Miss Esther Hemingway—this was the cousin's name—was an interesting person. She told Mary all about her tea-room and gift shop, how she started in business, the mistakes she made at first, and the lessons she had learned from experience. Because Barbara had asked her to do so she brought with her photographs of the establishment, its attractive and quaint exterior and its equally delightful interior.
“The whole secret,” she said, “is in keeping everything in good taste and simple. Choose the right location, fit up your rooms in taste and cheerfully, serve the best you can find, and sell the unusual and the attractive things that other people do not have, or at least are not likely to have. Then charge adequate prices.”
“Adequate being spelled A double D,” observed Barbara significantly.
Mary parted from Miss Hemingway with a new idea in her head, an idea that sometime or other she meant to put into practice.
On Thursday afternoon she called upon Mr. Green. That gentleman, having had his opportunity to think, was ready with a proposition. Briefly it was this: He had personally seen the principal creditors of Hamilton and Company—they were all Boston business houses—and he and they had agreed to make the following offer: Hamilton and Company's credit upon debts already owed was to be extended six months. Mary was to go home, endeavor to collect what money she could, and with it buy for cash whatever goods were needed for the summer season. If that season was a success and the business promised well for the future, then arrangements could be made for future buying and for paying the old debt a little at a time.
“At any rate,” concluded Mr. Green, “this postpones the mortgaging or selling for a time at least, and you always have it to fall back on if you can't make your new undertaking pay. I believe you can. I advise you to accept. Your other creditors feel the same way.”
He did not add, as he might have done, that the opinion of those other creditors had been influenced almost entirely by his own and that in one or two instances he had been obliged practically to underwrite the payment of Hamilton and Company's indebtedness before gaining consent. He had talked with Mr. Howe, who in turn had called his daughter into consultation, and Barbara's enthusiastic praise of her friend had strengthened the favorable impression which the girl had already made upon both gentlemen. “Do you know, I believe she may win out,” observed Mr. Howe.
“I am inclined to think she will,” concurred Green.
“Of course she will!” declared Barbara hotly. “No one who ever knew her would be silly enough to think she wouldn't.”
Hence Mr. Green's underwriting expedition and the proposition to Mary as the representative of Hamilton and Company.
Mary accepted, of course. She was very grateful and said so.
“I don't know how to thank you, Mr. Green. I can't promise anything, but if trying hard will win, I can promise that,” she said.
“That's all right, that's all right. I know you'll try, and I think you'll succeed. Now, why don't you go up and pick out some of those summer goods? You don't need them yet, and you needn't pay for them yet, but now is the time to select. Give my regards to your uncles when you see them and tell them I wish them luck. I may be motoring down the Cape this summer and if I do I shall drop in on you and them.”
Mary had news to tell when she reached South Harniss. It was listened to with attention, if not entirely in silence. Captain Shadrach's ejaculations of “You don't say!” “I want to know!” and “Jumpin' fire, how you talk!” served as punctuation marks during the narration. When she had finished her story, she said:
“And now, Uncle Zoeth and Uncle Shad—now that you've heard the whole of it, and know what my plan is, what do you think of it?”
Both answers were characteristic. Zoeth drew a long breath.
“The Almighty sent you to us, Mary-'Gusta,” he vowed. “There was a time a little spell ago when I begun to think He'd pretty nigh deserted us. I was almost discouraged and it shook my trust—it shook my trust. But now I can see He was just tryin' us out and in His good time He sent you to haul us off the shoals. He'll do it, too; I know it and I'll thank Him tonight on my knees.”
Shadrach shook his head. “By fire!” he cried. “Mary-'Gusta, I always said you was a wonder. You've given us a chance to get clear of the breakers, anyhow, and that's somethin' we'd never have done ourselves. Now, if you can collect that money from Jeremiah Clifford I'll—I'll—I swan to man I'll believe anything's possible, even Jonah's swallowin' the whale.”
“Oh, Shadrach!” protested his partner. “If you wouldn't be so irreverent!”
“All right, I'll behave. But it's just as I say: if Mary-'Gusta can get Jerry Clifford to pay up I'll swallow Jonah and the whale, too. 'Twas Moses that hit the rock and the water gushed out, wa'n't it? Um—hm! Well, that was somethin' of a miracle, but strikin' Jerry Clifford for ten cents and gettin' it would be a bigger one. Why, that feller's got fists like—like one of those sensitive plants my mother used to have in the settin'-room window when I was a boy. You touch a leaf of one of those plants and 'twould shrivel up tight. Jerry's fists are that way—touch one of 'em with a nickel and 'twill shut up, but not until the nickel's inside. No, sir! Ho, ho!”
“If you knew all this, Uncle Shad,” suggested Mary, “why in the world did you sell Mr. Clifford at all? If he wouldn't pay, why sell him?”
Mr. Hamilton answered.
“He always did pay,” he said. “You see, he had to have groceries and clothes and such and whenever he needed more and thought he owed us so much we wouldn't put more on the bill he'd pay a little on account. That way we managed to keep up with him.”
“Not exactly up with him,” commented the Captain. “We was always a couple of laps astern, but we could keep him in sight. Now the new stores have come and he can get trusted there he don't buy from us—or pay, either. What's the use? That's what he thinks, I cal'late.”
Mary considered. “The mean old sinner!” she said. “I should judge, Uncle Shad, that what you told me once, when I was a little girl, about the Free Masons might apply to Mr. Clifford's pocketbook. You said that once in Masonry a man never got out. A dollar in Mr. Clifford's pocketbook never gets out, either, does it?”
Shadrach chuckled. “You bet it don't!” he agreed. “It's got a life sentence. And, so fur as that goes, they generally open a Mason lodge meetin' with prayer, but 'twould take more'n that to open Jerry's pocketbook, I'LL bet you!”
“And, nevertheless,” declared Mary, laughing, “I mean to make him pay our bill.”
She did make the tight-fisted one pay up eventually, but months were to elapse before that desirable consummation was reached. In the meantime she set herself to collecting other amounts owed Hamilton and Company and to building up the trade at the store. The collecting was not so difficult as she had expected. The Captain and Mr. Hamilton had been reluctant to ask their friends and neighbors to be prompt in their payments, and largely through carelessness accounts had been permitted to drop behind. Mary personally saw the debtors and in most cases, by offering slight discounts or by accepting installments, she was able to obtain at least the greater part of the money due. In some cases she could obtain nothing and expected nothing, but these cases, among them that of 'Rastus Young, were rather to be considered in the light of good riddance even at the price. As Shadrach said, it was worth a few dollars not to have to listen to 'Rastus or Mrs. 'Rastus cry over their troubles whenever they wanted to hold up the firm for more plunder.
“Last time 'Rastus was in to buy anything,” declared the Captain, “he shed so blamed many tears into my rubber boots that I got wet feet and sent the boots to the cobbler's to have 'em plugged. I cal'lated they leaked; I didn't realize 'twas Rat workin' me out of four dollars worth of groceries by water power.”
The collections, then, those from Mr. Young and his ilk excepted, were satisfactory. Mary was enabled to buy and pay for a modest assortment of summer supplies, those she had selected while in Boston. The store she had thoroughly cleaned and renovated. The windows were kept filled with attractive displays of goods, and the prices of these goods, as set forth upon tickets, were attractive also. Business began to pick up, not a great deal at first, but a little, and as May brought the first of the early-bird summer cottagers to South Harniss, the silent partner of Hamilton and Company awaited the coming of what should be the firm's busiest season with hope and some confidence.
During all this time she had heard from Crawford at least once a week. He would have written oftener than that, had she permitted it. And in spite of her determination so bravely expressed in their interview over the telephone, she had written him more than the one letter she had promised. In that letter—her first—she told him the exact situation there at home; of her discovery that her uncles were in trouble, that the small, but to them precious, business they had conducted so long was in danger, and of her determination to give up school and remain at South Harniss where, she knew, she was needed. Then she went on to tell of her still greater discovery, that instead of being a young woman of independent means, she was and always had been dependent upon the bounty of her uncles.
You can imagine how I felt when I learned this [she wrote], when I thought of all the kindness I had accepted at their hands, accepted it almost as if it was my right, thinking as I did that my own money paid. And now to learn that all the time I had nothing and they had given of their own when they had so little, and given it so cheerfully, so gladly. And, Crawford, when I told them what I had done, they would not accept thanks, they would not let me even speak of the great debt I owed them. So far from that they acted as if they were the ones who owed and as if I had caught them in some disgraceful act. Why, if they could, they would have sent me back to Boston and to school, while they remained here to work and worry until the bankruptcy they expected came.
Do you wonder that I feel my first and whole duty is to them and that nothing, NOTHING must be permitted to interfere with it? I am going to stay here and try to help. Perhaps I shall succeed, and perhaps, which is just as probable, I may fail; but at any rate while my uncles live and need me I shall not leave them. They gave all they had to me when there was no real reason why they should give anything. The very least I can do is to be with them and work for them now when they are growing old.
I am sure you must understand this and that, therefore, you will forget—
She paused. “Forget” was a hard word to write. Fortunately she had written it at the top of a page, so she tore up that sheet and began the line again.
I am sure you will understand and that you will see my duty as I see it myself. It seems to me clear. Everyone has duties, I suppose, but you and I have ours very plainly shown us, I think. Yours is to your father and mine to my uncles.
Bringing that letter to an end was a difficult task. There were things which must be said and they were so very hard to say. At last, after many attempts:
I have not referred [she wrote] to what you said to me when we last met. It seems almost useless to refer to it, doesn't it? You see how I am placed here, and I have written you what I mean to do. And please understand I am doing it gladly, I am happy in having the opportunity to do it; but it does mean that for years my life and interest must be here with them. Even if I were sure of my own feelings—and perhaps I am not really sure—I certainly should not think of asking one I cared for to wait so long. You have your future to think of, Crawford, and you must think of it. And there is your father. Of course, I don't know, but I somehow feel certain that he will not wish you to marry me. Don't you think it better for us both to end it now? It seems so hopeless.
Which, she flattered herself, was brave and sensible and right. And, having reached this commendable conclusion and sealed and posted the letter, she came back to the house, went upstairs to her room, and, throwing herself upon the bed, cried bitterly for many minutes.
Yet, in a way, her tears were wasted. It takes two to make a bargain and although she might notify Crawford Smith that his case was hopeless, it by no means followed that that young gentleman would accept the notification as final. His reply to her letter was prompt and convincing. All the references to ending it were calmly brushed aside. There could be but two endings, one being their marriage—this, of course, the logical and proper ending—and the other Mary's notifying him that she did not love him. Anything else was nonsense and not worth consideration. Wait! He would wait fifty years if necessary, provided she would wait for him. He was about to take up his studies again, but now he would feel that he was working for her. His father, he was sorry to say, was not at all well. He was very nervous, weak and irritable.
I came home [he wrote] fully determined to tell him of you and my determination to marry you—always provided you will have me, you know—on the very night of my arrival. But when I saw how poor old Dad was feeling and after the doctor told me how very necessary it was that his nervous system be allowed a complete rest, I decided I must wait. So I shall wait; perhaps I shall not tell him for months; but just as soon as he is able to hear, I shall speak, and I am sure he will say, “Good luck and God bless you.” But if he doesn't, it will make not the slightest difference. If you will have me, Mary dear, nothing on this earth is going to stop my having you. That's as settled and solid a fact as the Rocky Mountains.
He pleaded for a letter at least once a week.
You needn't put a word of love in it [he wrote]. I know how conscientious you are, and I know perfectly well that until your mind is made up you won't feel it right to encourage me in the least. But do please write, if only to tell me how you are getting on with Hamilton and Company. I only wish I were there to help you pull those fine old uncles of yours out of the hot water. I know you'll do it, though. And meanwhile I shall be digging away out here and thinking of you. Please write OFTEN.
So Mary, after considerable thought and indecision, did write, although Crawford's suggestion that her letters have no word of love in them was scrupulously followed. And so, while the summer came and went, the letters crossed and the news of the slow but certain building up of the business of Hamilton and Company was exchanged for that of Edwin Smith's steady regaining of health and strength.
And Hamilton and Company's business was reviving. Even the skeptics could see the signs. The revival began before the summer residents arrived in South Harniss, but after the latter began to come and the cottages to open, it was on in earnest. John Keith helped to give it its first big start. Mrs. Wyeth wrote him of Mary's leaving her school work to go to the rescue of Shadrach and Zoeth, and the girl's pluck and uncomplaining acceptance of the task she considered set for her made Keith's eyes twinkle with admiration as he read the letter. The family came early to South Harniss and this year he came with them. One of his first acts after arrival was to stroll down to the village and enter Hamilton and Company's store. Mary and the partners were there, of course. He shook hands with them cordially.
“Well, Captain,” he said, addressing Shadrach, “how is the new hand taking hold?”
Shadrach grinned. “Hand?” he repeated. “I don't know's we've got any new hand, Mr. Keith. Ain't, have we, Zoeth?”
Zoeth did not recognize the joke. “He means Mary-'Gusta, I cal'late, Shadrach,” he said. “She's doin' splendid, Mr. Keith. I don't know how we ever got along without her.”
“I do,” put in his partner promptly; “we didn't, that's how. But, Mr. Keith, you hadn't ought to call Mary-'Gusta a 'hand.' Zoeth and me are the hands aboard this craft. She's skipper, and engineer, and purser, and—yes, and pilot, too. And don't she make us tumble up lively when she whistles! Whew! Don't talk!”
“She is the boss, then, is she?” observed Keith.
“Boss! I guess SO! She's got US trained! Why, I've got so that I jump out of bed nights and run round the room in my sleep thinkin' she's just hollered to me there's a customer waitin'. Oh, she's a hard driver, Mary-'Gusta is. Never had a fust mate aboard drove harder'n she does. And it's havin' its effect on us, too. Look at Zoeth! He's agin' fast; he's a year older'n he was twelve months ago.”
Keith laughed, Mary smiled, and Mr. Hamilton, judging by the behavior of the company that there was a joke somewhere on the premises, smiled too.
“You mustn't mind Uncle Shad, Mr. Keith,” said Mary. “He talks a great deal.”
“Talkin's all the exercise my face gets nowadays,” declared the Captain instantly. “She keeps me so busy I don't get time to eat. What do you think of the store, Mr. Keith? Some improvement, ain't it?”
Keith, who had already noticed the trim appearance of the store and the neat and attractive way in which the goods were displayed, expressed his hearty approval.
“And how is business?” he asked.
“Tiptop!” declared Shadrach.
“It's improvin' consider'ble,” said Zoeth.
“It is a little better, but it must be far better before I am satisfied,” said Mary.
“How is the cottage trade?” asked Keith.
“Why, not so very good. There aren't many cottagers here yet.”
When Keith reached home he called his wife into consultation.
“Gertrude,” he asked, “where do we buy our household supplies, groceries and the like?”
“In Boston, most of them. The others—those I am obliged to buy here in South Harniss—at that new store, Baker's.”
“I want you to buy them all of Hamilton and Company hereafter.”
“THAT old-fogy place! Why?”
“Because the partners, Captain Gould and the other old chap, are having a hard struggle to keep going and I want to help them.”
Mrs. Keith tossed her head. “Humph!” she sniffed. “I know why you are so interested. It is because of that upstart girl you think is so wonderful, the one who has been boarding with Clara Wyeth.”
“You're right, that's just it. She has given up her studies and her opportunities there in Boston and has come down here to help her uncles. Clara writes me that she was popular there in the school, that the best people were her friends, and you know of her summer in Europe with Letitia Pease. Letitia isn't easy to please and she is enthusiastic about Mary Lathrop. No ordinary girl could give up all that sort of thing and come back to the village where everyone knows her and go to keeping store again, and do it so cheerfully and sensibly and without a word of complaint. She deserves all the help and support we and our friends can give her. I mean to see that she has it.”
Mrs. Keith looked disgusted. “You're perfectly infatuated with that girl, John Keith,” she said. “It is ridiculous. If I were like some women I should be jealous.”
“If I were like some men you might be. Now, Gertrude, you'll buy in future from Hamilton and Company, won't you?”
“I suppose so. When your chin sets that way I know you're going to be stubborn and I may as well give in first as last. I'll patronize your precious Mary-'Gusta, but I WON'T associate with her. You needn't ask that.”
“Don't you think we might wait until she asks it first?”
“Tut! tut! Really, John, you disgust me. I wonder you don't order Sam to marry her.”
“From what Clara writes he might not have needed any orders if he had received the least encouragement from her. Sam might do worse; I imagine he probably will.”
So, because John Keith's chin was set, the Keith custom shifted to Hamilton and Company. And because the Keiths were wealthy and influential, and because the head of the family saw that that influence was brought to bear upon his neighbors and acquaintances, their custom followed. Hamilton and Company put a delivery wagon—a secondhand one—out on the road, and hired a distinctly secondhand boy to drive it. And Mary and Shadrach and Zoeth and, in the evenings, the boy as well, were kept busy waiting on customers. The books showed, since the silent partner took hold, a real and tangible profit, and the collection and payment of old debts went steadily on.
The partners, Shadrach and Zoeth, were no longer silent and glum. The Captain whistled and sang and was in high spirits most of the time. At home he was his old self, chaffing Isaiah about the housekeeping, taking a mischievous delight in shocking his friend and partner by irreverent remarks concerning Jonah or some other Old Testament personage, and occasionally, although not often, throwing out a sly hint to Mary about the frequency of letters from the West. Mary had told her uncles of Crawford's leaving Boston and returning to Nevada because of his father's ill health. The only item of importance she had omitted to tell was that of the proposal of marriage. She could not speak of that even to them. They would ask what her answer was to be, and if she loved Crawford. How could she answer that—truthfully—without causing them to feel that they were blocking her way to happiness? They felt that quite keenly enough, as it was.
So when Captain Shad declared the illness of the South Harniss postmaster—confined to his bed with sciatica—to be due to his having “stooped to pick up one of them eighty-two page Wild West letters of yours, Mary-'Gusta, and 'twas so heavy he sprained his back liftin' it,” Mary only laughed and ventured the opinion that the postmaster's sprained back, if he had one, was more likely due to a twist received in trying to read both sides of a postcard at once. Which explanation, being of the Captain's own brand of humor, pleased the latter immensely.
“Maybe you're right, Mary-'Gusta,” he chuckled. “Maybe that's what 'twas. Seth [the postmaster] is pure rubber so far as other folks' mail is concerned; maybe he stretched the rubber too far this time and it snapped.”
Zoeth did not joke much—joking was not in his line—but he showed his relief at the improvement in the firm's affairs in quieter but as unmistakable ways. When Mary was at the desk in the evenings after the store had closed, busy with the books, he would come and sit beside her, saying little but occasionally laying his hand gently on her shoulder or patting her arm and regarding her with a look so brimful of love and gratitude that it made her feel almost guilty and entirely unworthy.
“Don't, Uncle Zoeth,” she protested, on one such occasion. “Don't look at me like that. I—I—Really, you make me feel ashamed. I haven't done anything. I am not doing half enough.”
He shook his head.
“You're doin' too much, I'm afraid, Mary-'Gusta,” he said. “You're givin' up everything a girl like you had ought to have and that your Uncle Shadrach and I had meant you should have. You're givin' it up just for us and it ain't right. We ain't worthy of it.”
“Hush, hush, Uncle Zoeth! Please! When I think what you have given up for me—”
“'Twa'n't nothin', Mary-'Gusta. You came to your Uncle Shadrach and to me just when we needed somethin' to keep our lives sweet. Mine especial was bitter and there was danger 'twould always be so. And then we brought you over from Ostable in the old buggy and—and the Almighty's sunshine came with you. You was His angel. Yes, sir! His angel, that's what you was, only we didn't know it then. I was pretty sore and bitter in those days, thought I never could forget. And yet—and yet, now I really am forgettin'—or, if I don't forget, I'm more reconciled. And you've done it for me, Mary-'Gusta.”
Mary was puzzled. “Forget what?” she asked. “Do you mean the business troubles, Uncle Zoeth?”
Zoeth seemed to waken from a sort of dream. “Business troubles?” he repeated. “No, no; long, long afore that these troubles were, Mary-'Gusta. Don't let's talk about 'em. I can't talk about 'em even now—and I mustn't think. There are some troubles that—that—” He caught his breath and his tone changed. “I called you an angel just now, dearie,” he went on. “Well, you was and you are. There are angels in this world—but there's devils, too—there's devils, too. There; the Lord forgive me! What am I talkin' about? We'll forget what's gone and be thankful for what's here. Give your old uncle a kiss, Mary-'Gusta.”
He was happy in Mary's society and happy in the steady improvement of the business, but the girl and Captain Shadrach were a little worried concerning his general health. For years he had not been a very strong or active man, but now he looked paler and more frail than ever. He walked to and from the store and house several times a day, but he retired almost as soon as he entered the house at night and his appetite was not good.
“His nerves ain't back where they'd ought to be,” declared Shadrach. “He was awful shook up when it looked as if Hamilton and Company was goin' to founder. He didn't keep blowin' off steam about it the way I did—my safety-valve's always open—but he kept it all inside his biler and it's put his engine out of gear. He'll get along all right so long's it's smooth sailin', but what I'm afraid of is a rock showin' up in the channel unexpected. The doctor told me that Zoeth mustn't worry any more and he mustn't work too hard. More'n all, he mustn't have any scares or shocks or anything like that.”
“We must try to see that he doesn't have any,” said Mary.
“Sartin sure we must, but you can't always see those things in time to head 'em off. Now take my own case. I had a shock this mornin'. 'Rastus Young paid me a dollar on account.”
“WHAT? 'Rastus Young PAID you?”
“Well, I don't know's he paid it, exactly. He borrowed the dollar of one of those summer fellers over at Cahoon's boardin' house and he was tellin' Ab Bacheldor about it at the corner by the post-office. Ab, naturally, didn't believe any sane man would lend Rastus anything, so he wanted proof. 'Rastus hauled the dollar out of his pocket to show, and I who happened to be standin' behind 'em without their knowin' it reached out and grabbed it.”
“You did? Why, Uncle Shad!”
“Yes. I told 'Rastus I'd credit his account with it, but I don't know's I hadn't ought to give it back to the summer feller. Anyhow, gettin' it was a shock, same as I said at the beginnin'. 'Rastus says he's goin' to sue me. I told him I'd have sued HIM long ago if I'd supposed he could STEAL a dollar, let alone borrow one.”