why, I'm sure. I hope you will have a pleasant trip home and find your
father's health much improved. Good-by."

She hung up the receiver and hastened back to the store. Shadrach and
Zoeth looked at her questioningly. Finally the former said:

"Anything important, was it?"

"No, Uncle Shad, not very important."

"Oh!"

A short interval of silence, then--

"Mrs. Wyeth callin', I presume likely, eh?"

"No, Uncle Shad."

Shadrach asked no more questions, and Zoeth asked none. Neither of
them again mentioned Mary's call to the phone, either to her or to each
other. And she did not refer to it. She had promised her Uncle Shadrach,
when he questioned her the year before concerning Crawford, to tell him
"when there was anything to tell." But was there anything to tell now?
With the task which she had set herself and the uncertainty before her
she felt that there was not. Yet to keep silence troubled her. Until
recently there had never been a secret between her uncles and herself;
now there were secrets on both sides.