The depot master nodded.

“I remember ’em well,” he said.  “Liked ’em both—­everybody did.”

“Yes.  Well, he knew us and was glad to see us.

“‘It is you!’ he sings out.  ’By George!  I thought it was when I came on the floor just now.  My! but I’m glad to see you.  And Mr. Phinney, too!  Bully!  Clear out and let ’em alone, you Indians.’

“The crowd didn’t want to let us alone, but Sam got us clear somehow, and out of the Exchange Buildin’ and into the back room of a kind of restaurant.  Then he gets chairs for us, orders cigars, and shakes hands once more.

“‘To think of seein’ you two in New York!’ he says, wonderin’.  ’What are you doin’ here?  When did you come?  Tell us about it.’

“So we told him about our pleasure cruise, and what had happened to us so fur.  It seemed to tickle him ’most to death.

“‘Grace and I are keepin’ house, in a modest way, uptown,’ says Sam, ‘and she’ll be as glad to see you as I am.  You’re comin’ up to dinner with me to-night, and you’re goin’ to make us a visit, you know,’ he says.

“Well, if we didn’t know it then, we learned it right away.  Nothin’ that me or Simeon could say would make him change the course a point.  So Phinney went up to the Golconda House and got our bags, and at half-past four that afternoon the three of us was in a hired hack bound uptown.

“On the way Sam was full of fun as ever.  He laughed and joked, and asked questions about East Harniss till you couldn’t rest.  All of a sudden he slaps his knee and sings out: 

“‘There!  I knew I’d forgotten somethin’.  Our butler left yesterday, and I was to call at the intelligence office on my way home and see if they’d scared up a new one.’

“I looked at Simeon, and he at me.

“‘Hum!’ says I, thinkin’ about that ‘modest’ housekeepin’.  ’Do you keep a butler?’

“‘Not long,’ says he, dry as a salt codfish.  And that’s all we could get out of him.

“I s’pose there’s different kinds of modesty.  We hadn’t more’n got inside the gold-plated front door of that house when I decided that the Holden brand of housekeepin’ wa’n’t bashful enough to blush.  If I’d been runnin’ that kind of a place, the only time I’d felt shy and retirin’ was when the landlord came for the rent.

“One of the fo’mast hands—­hired girls, I mean—­went aloft to fetch Mrs. Holden, and when Grace came down she was just as nice and folksy and glad to see us as a body could be.  But she looked sort of troubled, just the same.

“‘I’m ever so glad you’re here,’ says she to me and Simeon.  ’But, oh, Sam! it’s a shame the way things happen.  Cousin Harriet and Archie came this afternoon to stay until to-morrow.  They’re on their way South.  And I have promised that you and I shall take Harriet to see Marlowe to-night.  Of course we won’t do it now, under any consideration, but you know what she is.’