She chose a letter from the afternoon’s mail, and opened it with a horn-handled paper-cutter, crumpling the envelope and dropping it over her shoulder into a big waste-paper basket.  She was not apparently overcome by his magnanimity.

“Well, well,” she said, glancing over the letter; “that man I’ve got at Waupegan is turning out better than I expected when I put him there; or else he’s the greatest living liar.  You never can tell about these people.  Well, well!—­Oh, yes, Morton; about that lawsuit.  I saw Edward this afternoon and had a little talk with him about it.”

“You saw Thatcher about the suit!”

“I most certainly did, Morton.  I had him go down to the bank to talk to me.”

“I’m sorry you took the trouble to do that.  If you’d told me—­”

“Oh, I’m not afraid of Edward Thatcher.  If a man brings a lawsuit against me, the sooner I see him the better.  I sent word to Edward and he was waiting at the bank when I got there.”

“I’d given Thatcher credit for being above dragging a woman who had always been his friend into a lawsuit.  He certainly owed you an apology.”

“I didn’t see it just that way, Morton, and he didn’t apologize.  I wouldn’t have let him!”

She looked at him over her glasses disconcertingly, and he could think of no reply.  It was possible that Thatcher had bought her stock or that she had made him bid for it.  She had a reputation for driving hard bargains, and he judged from her manner that her conference with Thatcher, whatever its nature, had not been unsatisfactory.  He recalled with exasperation his wife’s displeasure over this whole affair; it was incumbent upon him not only to reestablish himself with Mrs. Owen, but to do it in a way to satisfy Mrs. Bassett.

“You needn’t worry about that lawsuit, Morton; there ain’t going to be any lawsuit.”

She gave this time to “soak in,” as she would have expressed it, and then concluded:—­

“It’s all off; I persuaded Edward to drop the suit.  The case will be dismissed in the morning.”

“Dismissed?  How dismissed, Aunt Sally?”

“Just dismissed; that’s all there is of it.  I went to see Fitch, too, and gave him a piece of my mind.  He wrote me a letter I found here saying that in my absence he’d taken the liberty of entering an appearance for me, along with you, in the case.  I told him I’d attend to my own lawsuits, and that he could just scratch his appearance off the docket.”

The presumption of her lawyer seemed to obscure all other issues for the moment.  Morton Bassett was annoyed to be kept waiting for an explanation that was clearly due him as her co-defendant; he controlled his irritation with difficulty.  Her imprudence in having approached his enemy filled him with forebodings; there was no telling what compromises she might have negotiated with Edward G. Thatcher.

“I suppose you shamed him out of it?” he suggested.