lavished his money on three daughters; but the home of his youth neither
saw him nor his money until Margaret Ellis bought a house on Brady
Street, far up town, where she could have all the grass that she wanted.
Mrs. Ellis was a widow and rich. Not a millionaire like her brother, but
the possessor of a handsome property.

She was the best-natured woman in the world, and never guessed how hard
her neighbors found it to forgive her for always calling their town of
thirty thousand souls, "the country." She said that she had pined for
years to live in the country, and have horses, and a Jersey cow and
chickens, and "a neat pig." All of which modest cravings she gratified
on her little estate; and the gardener was often seen with a scowl and
the garden hose, keeping the pig neat.

It was later that Mr. Armorer had bought the street railways, they
having had a troublous history and being for sale cheap. Nobody that
knows Armorer as a business man would back his sentiment by so much
as an old shoe; yet it was sentiment, and not a good bargain, that had
enticed the financier. Once engaged, the instincts of a shrewd trader
prompted him to turn it into a good bargain, anyhow. His fancy was
pleased by a vision of a return to the home of his childhood and his
struggling youth, as a greater personage than his hopes had ever dared
promise.

But, in the event, there was little enough gratification for his vanity.
Not since his wife's death had he been so harassed and anxious; for he
came not in order to view his new property, but because his sister
had written him her suspicions that Harry Lossing wanted to marry his
youngest daughter.

Armorer arrived in the early dawn. Early as it was, a handsome victoria,
with horses sleeker of skin and harness heavier and brighter than one
is used to meet outside the great cities, had been in waiting for twenty
minutes; while for that space of time a pretty girl had paced up and
down the platform. The keenest observer among the crowd, airing its meek
impatience on the platform, did not detect any sign of anxiety in her
behavior. She walked erect, with a step that left a clean-cut footprint
in the dust, as girls are trained to walk nowadays. Her tailor-made
gown of fine blue serge had not a wrinkle. It was so simple that only
a fashionable woman could guess anywhere near the awful sum total which
that plain skirt, that short jacket, and that severe waistcoat had once
made on a ruled sheet of