Marley was walking moodily down Main Street, feeling that he had no part in the bustling happiness of the people going home from their day's work, when, lifting his head, he saw Mrs. Blair in her surrey. Instantly she jerked the horse in toward the curb and beckoned to him.
"Why, Glenn! I'm so glad I met you!" she said, her face rosy with its smile. "I have something for you."
She raised her eyebrows in a significant way and began fumbling in her lap. Presently she leaned out of the surrey and pressed something into his hand.
"Just between ourselves, you know!" she said, with the delicious mystery of a secret, and then gathering up her reins, she clucked at her lazy horse.
He looked after her a moment, then at the thick envelope he held in his hand. On it was written in the long Anglican characters of a young girl, these words:
Judge Blair and Lavinia returned home Saturday.
"I guess it's no use," the judge said to Mrs. Blair when she had followed him up stairs, where he had gone to wash off the dust he had accumulated during the six hours the train had consumed in jerking itself from Sandusky to Macochee.
"No, I could see how relieved she was to get home," replied Mrs. Blair, musing idly out of the window. She was not so sure that she was pleased with the result she had done her part to accomplish.
"I guess you were right," the judge said.
"I?" asked Mrs. Blair, suddenly turning round.
"Yes--in saying that it would be best not to dignify it by too much notice. That might only add to its seriousness."
Mrs. Blair looked out of the window again.
"Of course," the judge went on presently, "I wouldn't want it considered as an engagement."
"You'd better have a talk with her," he said. She saw that he was seeking his usual retreat in such cases, and she was now determined not to take the responsibility. Spiritually they tossed this responsibility back and forth between them, like a shuttlecock.
"But wouldn't that make it look as if we were taking too much notice of it?"
"Well," the judge said, "I don't know. Do just as you think best."
"Didn't you talk to her about it when you were away?" Mrs. Blair asked.
Mrs. Blair waited, and the judge dawdled at his toilet. Some compulsion she could not resist, though she tried, distrusting her own weakness, drove Mrs. Blair to speak first, and even then she sought to minimize the effect of her surrender.