“I wonder where’s he going,” Mrs. Lee said, in a hushed tone.  She was just approaching a house where they meditated calling, and she was rubbing on her violet-scented white gloves.  Mrs. Lee looked worn and considerably thinner than usual, and she was uncomfortably conscious of her last season’s bonnet.  “My bonnet doesn’t look very well to make calls,” she had remarked, when she entered the coach, hired, as usual, at her companion’s expense.

“It looks very well indeed,” said Mrs. Van Dorn, in a covertly triumphant voice.  She herself wore a most gorgeous new bonnet with a clump of winter roses crowning her gray pompadour.  “It isn’t the one you wore last winter, is it?” asked she.

“Yes,” admitted Mrs. Lee.

“You don’t mean it!  I thought it was new,” said Mrs. Van Dorn, lying comfortably.

“No, it’s my old bonnet.  I thought maybe it would do a while longer,” said Mrs. Lee, meekly.

“I heard yesterday that a good many folks in Banbridge had been losing money through Captain Carroll,” said Mrs. Van Dorn, with appositeness.

Mrs. Lee colored.  “Have they?” said she.

“I heard so.”

“Who is that man coming?” said Mrs. Lee, quickly, striving to turn the conversation.  Then she directly saw that the man was Carroll himself.

“Why, it’s Captain Carroll himself!” said Mrs. Van Dorn, and then Mrs. Lee wondered, in her small, hushed voice, where he was going.

Samson Rawdy, driving, looked sharply at him.  He even leaned far out from the seat after he had passed, and watched to make sure he did not take the road to the railroad station.  Then he began, for the hundredth time mentally, calculating the amount that was still owing him.  It was not much, only a matter of two dollars and some cents, but his mind dwelt upon it.

“Seems to me he looked queer,” Mrs. Lee remarked, thoughtfully, after Carroll had passed.

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know.  There was something about the way he was walking made me think so.  I suppose he doesn’t know what way to turn.”

“Well, I don’t pity him,” said Mrs. Van Dorn, with subdued vindictiveness.  “I don’t see what a man is thinking of to come into a place and conduct himself as he has done.  They say he is in debt everywhere, and has cheated everybody who didn’t know any better than to be cheated.”

Mrs. Van Dorn spoke with point.  She had heard on very good authority that Mrs. Lee’s husband had lost heavily through his misplaced confidence in Carroll.  Mr. Lee knew that she knew, but she stood up bravely for the maligned man hurrying towards the Port Willis trolley-car.

“Well, I don’t know,” said she.  “You can’t always tell by what people say.  It always seems to me that Banbridge folks are pretty ready to talk, anyway.  We don’t know how much temptation the poor man has had, and maybe he never meant to cheat anybody.”

“Never meant!” repeated Mrs. Van Dorn, sarcastically.  “Why, that is the way he has been doing right along everywhere he has lived.  Why, I had it straight from a lady I met who had visited in Hillfield, New York, where they used to live before they came here.  Never meant!”