entirely; got a little befogged, and came here without intending to,
that's all. When she found out her mistake, she apologized, and left."

[Illustration]

"What did she have on?" asked Mrs. Terwilliger, with a sigh of relief.

But the president of the Three-dollar Shoe Company, of Soleton,
Massachusetts (Limited), said nothing. He had dropped off into a profound
slumber.


III

For the next two weeks Terwilliger lived in a state of preoccupation that
worried his wife and daughters to a very considerable extent. They were
afraid that something had happened, or was about to happen, in connection
with the shoe corporation; and this deprived them of sleep, particularly
the elder Miss Terwilliger, who had danced four times at a recent ball
with an impecunious young earl, whom she suspected of having intentions.
Ariadne was in a state of grave apprehension, because she knew that much
as the earl might love her, it would be difficult for them to marry on his
income, which was literally too small to keep the roof over his head in
decent repair.

But it was not business troubles that occupied every sleeping and waking
thought of Hankinson Judson Terwilliger. His mind was now set upon the
hardest problem it had ever had to cope with, that problem being how to so
ennoble the spectre cook of Bangletop that she might outrank the ancestors
of his landlord in the other world--the shady world, he called it. The