o to attend to myself. But Mr.
Plausaby _does_ know how to manage sharks."

The more Albert thought the matter over, the more he was convinced that
Mr. Plausaby did know how to manage sharks. He went out and examined the
stakes, and found that block 26 did not contain the oak, but was much
farther down in the slough, and that the corner lots that were to have
been Katy's wedding portion stretched quite into the peat bog, and
further that if the Baptist University should stand on block 27, it would
have a baptistery all around it.

CHAPTER VI.

LITTLE KATY'S LOVER.

Katy was fifteen and a half, according to the family Bible. Katy was a
woman grown in the depth and tenderness of her feeling. But Katy wasn't
twelve years of age, if measured by the development of her
discretionary powers. The phenomenon of a girl in intellect with a
woman's passion is not an uncommon one. Such girls are always
attractive--feeling in woman goes for so much more than thought. And
such a girl-woman as Kate has a twofold hold on other people--she is
loved as a woman and petted as a child.

Albert Charlton knew that for her to love was for her to give herself
away without thought, without reserve, almost without the possibility of
revocation. Because he was so oppressed with dread in regard to the young
man who walked and boated with Katy, courted and caressed her, but about
the seriousness of whose intentions the mother seemed to have some
doubt--because of the very awfulness of his apprehensions, he dared not
ask Kate anything.

The suspense was not for long. On the second evening after Albert's
return, Smith Westcott, the chief clerk, the agent in charge of the
branch store of Jackson, Jones & Co., in Metropolisville, called at the
house of Plausaby. Mr. Smith Westcott was apparently more than
twenty-six, but not more than thirty years of age, very well-dressed,
rather fast-looking, and decidedly _blase_. His history was written in
general but not-to-be-misunderstood terms all over his face. It was not
the face of a drunkard, but there was the redness of many glasses of wine
in his complexion, and a nose that expressed nothing so much as pampered
self-indulgence. He had the reputation of being a good, sharp business
man, with his "eye-teeth cut," but his conversation was:

"Well--ha! ha!--and how's Katy? Divine as ever! he! he!" rattling the
keys and coins in his pocket and frisking about. "Beautiful evening! And
how does my