about hateful money."

"My soul an' body!" gasped the storekeeper, as though she had spoken
irreverently about sacred things. "Money ain't never hateful, Niece
Louise."

On Sunday I. Tapp did not accompany his family to church at Paulmouth.
Returning, the big car stopped before Cap'n Abe's store and Mrs. Tapp
came in to call on Louise. The good woman hugged the girl and wept on
her bosom.

"I'm so happy and so sorry, both together, that I'm half sick," she
said. "Lawford is so proud and joyful that I could cry every time I
look at him. And his father's so cross and unhappy that I have to cry
for him, too."

Which seemed to prove that Mrs. Tapp was being kept in a moist state
most of the time.

"But I know I. Tapp is sorry for what he's done. Only there's no use
expectin' him to admit it, or that he'll change. If Fordy won't marry
Dot Johnson I. Tapp will never forgive him. I don't know what I shall
say to her when she does come."

"Maybe she will not appear at all," Louise suggested comfortingly.

"I don't know. I got a letter from her mother putting the visit off
till later. But it can't be put off forever. Anyhow, when she comes
Lawford says he won't be at home. I hope the girls will act nice to
her."

"_I_ will," Louise assured her. "And I'll make Mr. Tapp like me yet;
you see if I don't."

"Oh, I can't hope for that much, my dear," sighed the lachrymose lady,
shaking her head; but she kissed Louise again.

Lawford waved a hand to her at her chamber window early on Monday
morning as L'Enfant Terrible drove him in the roadster to Paulmouth to
catch the milk train. All the girls were proud of their brother
because, as Cecile said, he was proving himself to be "such a perfectly
good sport after all." And perhaps I. Tapp himself admired his son for
the pluck he was showing.

They corresponded after that--Louise and Lawford. As she could not
hope to hear from the _Curlew_ again until the schooner made the port
of Boston, Lawford's letters were the limit of her correspondence.
Louise had always failed to make many close friends among women.

Her interests aside from those at the store and with the movie people
were limited, too. The butterfly society of The Beaches did not much
attract Louise Grayling.

Aunt Euphemia manifestly disapproved of her niece at every turn. The
Lady from Poughkeepsie had remained on the Cape for the full season in
the hope of breaking up the intimacy between Lo