dded
softly, and smiled as the pink bloom on Marjie's cheeks deepened.
"Marjie, don't git mad at an old man like your Uncle Cam. I mean no
harm."

It was the morning after the party. Marjie, who had been helping Mary
Gentry "straighten up," was resting now by the cosy fireplace, while
Dollie and Mary prepared lunch.

"Go ahead, Uncle Cam," the girl said, smiling. "I couldn't get mad at
you, because you never would do anything unkind."

"Well, little sweetheart, honest now, and I won't tell, and it's none of
my doggoned business neither; but be you goin' to marry Amos Judson?"

There was no resentment in the girl's face when she heard his halting
question, but the pink color left it, and her white cheeks and big brown
eyes gave her a stateliness Cam had never seen in her before.

"No, Uncle Cam. It makes no difference what comes to me, I could not
marry such a man. I never will."

"Oh, Lord bless you, Marjie!" Cam closed his eyes a moment. "They's a
long happy road ahead of you. I can see it with my good inside eyes that
sees further'n these things I use to run the Cambridge House with.
'Tain't my business, I'm a gossipin' inquisitive old pokeyer-nose, but
I've always been so proud of you, little blossom. Yes, we're comin',
Dollie, if you've got a thing a dyspeptic can eat."

He held the door for Marjie to pass before him to the dining-room. Cam
was not one of the too-familiar men. There was a gentleman's heart under
the old spotted velvet "weskit," as he called his vest, and with all his
bad grammar, a quaint dignity and purity of manner and speech to women.

But for all this declaration of Marjie's, Judson was planning each day
for the great event with an assurance that was remarkable.

"She'll be so tangled up in this, she'll have to come to terms. There
ain't no way out, if she wants to save old Whately's name from dishonor
and keep herself out of the hired-girl class," he said to Tell Mapleson.
"And besides, there's the durned Baronet tribe that all the Whatelys
have been so devoted to. That's it, just devoted to 'em. Now they'll
come in for a full share of disgrace, too."

The little man had made a god of money so long he could not understand
how poverty and freedom may bring infinitely more of blessing than
wealth and bonds. So many years, too, he had won his way by trickery
and deception, he felt himself a man of Destiny in all he under-took.
But one thing he never could know--I wonder if men ever do k