native and----"

Uncle Johnny ignored the picture.

"We can trip ourselves up at almost every turn, Mary. Aren't places
really big or small as we ticket them in our own minds? If you think of
Miller's Notch and Kettle by figures of the census, they _are_
small--but, maybe, reckoning them from real angles they're big--very
big, and it's our cities that are small. To go back to Jerry--when I
think of her I always think of something I said to Barbara Lee--that
nothing on earth could chain a spirit like that anywhere--she was one of
the world's crusaders. Oh--youth! If nothing spoils my Jerry, she'll
always go forward with her head up! But _that's_ what has made me worry,
more than once, during my "experiment." _Have_ we risked the girl to the
danger of being spoiled? Will our little superficialities, so ingrained
that we don't realize them, taint her splendid unaffectedness? I don't
know--I can't tell until I see her back at Kettle--in that environment
the like of which I've never found anywhere else. If she isn't the same
shining-eyed Jerry plus considerable wisdom gleaned from her books and
her school friends, I'll have it on my conscience--if she's the same,
well, the winter's been worth a great deal to all of us! When I see her
and watch her back there--I'll know. And that leads me to what I really
came here to tell you." John Westley drew a letter from his pocket. "I
had word from Trimmer--the Boston attorney. He's found traces of a Craig
Winton who was a graduate of Boston Tech. He lived in obscure lodgings
in a poorer part of Boston and yet he seemed to have quite a circle of
friends of an intellectual sort. Some of them have given enough facts to
be pieced together so as to prove, I think conclusively, that this chap
is the one we're looking for. He was an inventor and of a very brilliant
turn of mind, but unpractical--the old story--and desperately poor. He
married the only daughter of a chemist who lived in Cambridge. His
health broke down and he took his wife and went off to the country
somewhere--his Boston friends lost track of him after that. Later one
received a letter telling of the birth of a son."

"How interesting! Robert will be home in two weeks and then we can make
the settlement."

"But, Mary--the search hasn't ended. He left Boston for the
'country'--that is very vague. And I don't like the tone of Trimmer's
communication. He advises dropping the whole matter. He says that
sufficient effort has