“Let me have it to do over and I guarantee you two hundred dollars,” said Morgan.

“I’ll think of it and let you know,” was Celia’s answer.

“It seems like the irony of fate,” she told herself, “to have to sell it almost before it is really mine; and yet when two hundred dollars lie within my reach, I can’t refuse to take them.  Poor old spinet, it is too bad to send you away.  I shouldn’t do it if I could help it; but you don’t fit in with these times.  Or rather, you are helping me out; that is the way to look at it.”

So it was that the spinet did not long keep company with the portrait of Saint Cecilia, its original owner, but was harked away to the shop of the magician and the society of the clock case and the claw-footed sofa.

Here Allan Whittredge saw and recognized it one day, and questioned Morgan.  Allan remembered the prim little sitting room, and how Celia had looked forward to owning the spinet, and it troubled him to think she was compelled to part with it.  When he left the shop he went over to Miss Betty’s.

After talking for a while about other things, he asked, “Betty, is it true that Dr. Fair left his family with very little?”

“True?  Of course it is.  Have you just found that out?  Celia is working her fingers to the bone, and I wish I were sure those boys are worth it,” was her reply.

“How did it happen?”

“Well, I don’t think Dr. Fair had the best judgment in the world when it came to investments; at the same time, a lot of other people lost in the West View coal mines.  His death was a great shock; I loved Dr. Fair.”

“I too,” said Allan.  “He was a good man.”

“I don’t know whether you know it, Allan.  Perhaps I ought not to tell you; but there was some talk of Dr. Fair’s treatment having done your father harm.  I really believe your mother was out of her mind with anxiety, and you know she disliked the doctor.  He was dismissed, you remember; and this was whispered about and exaggerated until I think it almost broke his heart.  Of course there was no truth in it—­that was made clear in the end—­and his death put a stop to the talk, for everybody loved and respected Dr. Fair; but it has been terribly hard on Celia.”

Allan sat looking at Miss Betty absently.  “Terribly hard on Celia,”—­the words repeated themselves over and over in his mind.

“This is the first I ever heard of it,” he said at length.

Miss Betty watched him as he walked away.  “As usual I have been minding some one else’s business,” she said to herself; “but he ought to know it.  Allan is a fine fellow.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST.

Under the greenwood tree.

“Must you then be proud and pitiless?”

The book containing the constitution of the Arden Foresters lay on the garden bench.  The Foresters themselves were spending the afternoon at the creek at the foot of Red Hill.  All was quiet in the neighborhood.  The bank doors had closed two hours ago, and Friendship seemed to have retired for its afternoon nap.