d to Rodney while there was a
promise?"

"Not more than you could possibly help," said Mr. Sherrett,
smiling.

"Not the very least little bit!" said Sylvie, emphatically; and then
they all three laughed together.

* * * * *

I don't know why everything should have happened as it did, just in
these few days; except--that this book was to be all printed by the
twenty-third of April, and it all had to go in.

That very afternoon there came a letter to Miss Euphrasia from Mr.
Dakie Thayne.

He had found Mr. Farron Saftleigh in Dubuque; he had pressed him
close upon the matter of his transactions with Mrs. Argenter; he had
obtained a hold upon him in some other business that had come to his
knowledge in the course of his inquiries at Denver: and the result
had been that Mr. Farron Saftleigh had repurchased of him the
railroad bonds and the deeds of Donnowhair land, to the amount of
five thousand dollars; which sum he inclosed in his own cheek
payable to the order of Sylvia Argenter.

Knowing, morally, some things that I have not had opportunity to
investigate in detail, and cannot therefore set down as verities,--I
am privately convinced that this little business agency on the part
of Dakie Thayne, was--in some proportion at least,--a piece of a
horse-shoe!

If you have not happened to read "Real Folks," you will not know
what that means. If you have, you will now get a glimpse of how it
had come to Ruth and Dakie that their horse-shoe,--their little
section of the world's great magnet of loving relation,--might be
made. Indeed, I do know, and can tell you, the very words Ruth said
to Dakie one day when they had been married just three weeks.

"I've always thought, Dakie, that if ever I had money,--or if ever I
came to advise or help anybody who had, and who wanted to do good
with it,--that there would be one special way I should like to take.
I should like to sit up in the branches, and shake down fruit into
the laps of some people who never would know where it came from, and
wouldn't take it if they did; though they couldn't reach a single
bough to pick for themselves. I mean nice, unlucky people; people
who always have a hard time, and need to have a good one; and are
obliged in many things to pretend they do. There are a good many who
are willing and anxious to help the very poor, but I think there's a
mission waiting for somebody among the pinched-and-smiling people.
I've bee