He lapsed into silence, his sentence only begun.  Mrs. Armstrong, looking up, found him gazing at her with the absent, far-off look that his closest associates knew so well.  She had not met it before and found it rather embarrassing, especially as it kept on and on.

“Well?” she asked, after a time.  He started and awoke to realities.

“I was just thinkin’,” he explained, “that you was the only woman that has been in this house since the summer I let it to the Davidson folks.  And Mrs. Davidson wan’t a mite like you.”

That was true enough.  Mrs. Davidson had been a plump elderly matron with gray hair, a rather rasping voice and a somewhat aggressive manner.  Mrs. Armstrong was young and slim, her hair and eyes were dark, her manner refined and her voice low and gentle.  And, if Jed had been in the habit of noticing such things, he might have noticed that she was pleasant to look at.  Perhaps he was conscious of this fact, but, if so, it was only in a vague, general way.

His gaze wandered to Barbara, who, with Petunia, was curled up in a big old-fashioned rocker.

“And a child, too,” he mused.  “I don’t know when there’s been a child in here.  Not since I was one, I guess likely, and that’s too long ago for anybody to remember single-handed.”

But Mrs. Armstrong was interested in his previous remark.

“You have let others occupy this house then?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am, one summer I did.  Let it furnished to some folks name of Davidson, from Chicago.”

“And you haven’t rented it since?”

“No, ma’am, not but that once.”

She was silent for a moment.  Then she said:  “I am surprised that it hasn’t been occupied always.  Do you ask such a very high rent, Mr. Winslow?”

Jed looked doubtful.  “Why, no, ma’am,” he answered.  “I didn’t cal’late ‘twas so very high, considerin’ that ’twas just for ’summer and furnished and all.  The Davidsons paid forty dollars a month, but—­”

“Forty dollars!  A month?  And furnished like that?  You mean a week, don’t you?”

Mr. Winslow looked at her.  The slow smile wandered across his face.  He evidently suspected a joke.

“Why, no, ma’am,” he drawled.  “You see, they was rentin’ the place, not buyin’ it.”

“But forty dollars a month is very cheap.”

“Is it?  Sho!  Now you speak of it I remember that Captain Sam seemed to cal’late ’twas.  He said I ought to have asked a hundred, or some such foolishness.  I told him he must have the notion that I was left out of the sweet ile when they pickled the other thirty-nine thieves.  Perhaps you’ve read the story, ma’am,” he suggested.

His visitor laughed.  “I have read it,” she said.  Then she added, plainly more to herself than to him:  “But even forty is far too much, of course.”

Jed was surprised and a little hurt.