."

Joel deliberated. He rose and paced the room, halting at length in a
dramatic posture, face to face with his sister.

"Persis, I've got no love for the city as you well know. As the poet
says, 'God the first garden made and the first city, Cain.' But I'm
ready to sacrifice myself for what's best for you. I'll go along."

Persis regarded him without any indication of fervent gratitude for the
sacrifice so nobly announced.

"It's good of you, Joel, but it won't be necessary."

He waved her protest away with a dominating gesture.

"It _is_ necessary. It won't do to turn a woman like you loose in a
city like Boston. As long as you didn't have any money, it wasn't so
much matter. But now there'll be folks to sell you gold bricks, and
when you unwrap 'em, they won't be nothing but plain ordinary bricks
after all."

"They can't sell me bricks if I won't buy 'em, Joel."

"You don't know what they can do. You never went up against a
professional sharper. Women ain't any match for that kind. They'll
probably give me a bed at the hotel that hasn't been used since
sometime last winter, but never mind. I'm going along to protect you."

"Joel!" Persis' tone for all its gentleness showed plenty of decision.
"Thank you, but this time I don't want you."

"What's that?"

"Some other time when you feel like running up to the city for a few
days, we'll go together. But just now I've got some business to attend
to."

"You mean I'd be in the way?"

"Yes."

"Persis." Joel spoke in heart-broken accents. "I guess the Good Book
ain't far wrong in calling money the root of all evil. Up till you
come into this prop'ty, you was all a man could ask for in a sister."
Like many another, Joel found his blessings brightest in retrospect.
"But now you're as set as a post and as stubborn as a mule. It's
pretty dangerous, Persis, when a woman gets the idea she knows all
that's worth knowing. As the poet says, 'A little learning is a
dangerous thing.' I feel in my bones that there's trouble coming out
of this wild-goose chase of yours."

It was not characteristic of Joel to keep his grievances secret.
Wherever he went for the next few days, he fairly oozed reproach and
resentment. And on the Monday when Persis took the ten o'clock train
for Boston it was generally understood that she had declined the
pleasure of her brother's company and was bent on an errand whose
nature she alone knew.

"She'll put up at a hot