"So Ludovic Speed has been hurried up to some purpose at
last," said Mr. Sherman, when Anne called in at Echo Lodge,
brimful with her news. "And you are delighted, of course, and
my poor pride must be the scapegoat. I shall always be
remembered in Grafton as the man from Boston who wanted
Theodora Dix and couldn't get her."

"But that won't be true, you know," said Anne comfortingly.

Arnold Sherman thought of Theodora's ripe beauty, and the
mellow companionableness she had revealed in their brief
intercourse.

"I'm not perfectly sure of that," he said, with a half sigh.





II. Old Lady Lloyd


I. The May Chapter


Spencervale gossip always said that "Old Lady Lloyd" was rich
and mean and proud. Gossip, as usual, was one-third right and
two-thirds wrong. Old Lady Lloyd was neither rich nor mean; in
reality she was pitifully poor--so poor that "Crooked Jack"
Spencer, who dug her garden and chopped her wood for her, was