bundled together and
tucked away to wait their fate, while Persis worked till a late hour on
Mildred Chase's wedding dress. But tired as she was, with that
undercurrent of depression which sometimes most unjustly is the
attendant on generous sacrifice, she found time to write a letter to a
gentleman named Thompson, in care of the Hollenden Hotel, Cleveland.

"Mr. W. Thompson:

"Dear Sir--Yours received. Nothing could be further from my wish than
to keep anything that belongs to somebody else, but you can understand
that I don't feel like sending a young lady's letter to the first man
who happens to ask for it, especially as Thompson is not what you would
call an unusual name. If the young lady who wrote the letter will drop
me a line asking me to forward it to you, I'll be happy to oblige her.
She won't even have to write any thing but her first name, unless she
likes.

"Yours truly,

"Persis Dale.

"P. S. If the young lady will tell me your full name, when she writes,
it will make you a lot surer to get the letter. W. Thompson is a name
that fits lots of people."

This epistolary weight off her conscience, Persis went up-stairs to
bed, and for the first time in twenty years, she went without a good
night to the photograph in the blue plush frame.

CHAPTER X

SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT

Justin Ware arrived in town the day Persis finished Mildred's wedding
dress. She heard the news from Joel, who had been at the station when
the train came in. This was not a happy accident, nor was it intended
as a spontaneous welcome to the returning son of Clematis. Year in and
year out, except when the state of his health prevented, Joel kept a
standing engagement with the four-twenty train, and few left town or
entered it without his knowledge.

"He's filled out considerable, Justin Ware has, but except for that he
hasn't changed much. Got a seal ring and silk lining to his overcoat.
He ain't what you call a flashy dresser, but he lays it all over the
young chaps like Thad West who think they're so swell."

Persis listened without comment. She had worked unusually hard that
week, and the tired lines of her face acknowledged as much. She set
them at defiance in a peculiarly feminine fashion by dressing that
evening in the unbecoming henrietta and doing her hair in the plainest,
most severe fashion. At half past seven Thomas Hardin came.

"That Ware feller is going to put up at the Clemat