P.S.  One or both of us will meet you at the depot.

Captain Shad’s epistle was more worldly but not more coherent.

Be sure and take the train that comes right on through [he wrote].  Don’t take the one that goes to Woods Hole.  Zoeth is so fidgety and nervous for fear you will make a mistake that he keeps me on pins and needles.  Isaiah ain’t much better.  He swept out the setting-room twice last week and if he don’t roast the cat instead of the chicken he is calculating to kill, it will be a mercy.  I am the only one aboard the ship that keeps his head and I tell them not to worry.  Be sure you take that through train.  And look out for them electric cars, if you come to the depot in one.  Better settle on the one you are going to take and then take the one ahead of it so as to be sure and not be late.  Your train leaves the dock at quarter-past four.  The Woods Hole one is two minutes earlier.  Look out and not take that.  Zoeth is afraid you will make a mistake, but I laugh at him.  Don’t take the wrong train.

Mary laughed when she read these letters, but there was a choke in the laugh.  In spite of the perils of travel by the electrics and the New Haven railroad, she reached South Harniss safe, sound, and reasonably on time.  The first person she saw on the platform of the station was Captain Shadrach.  He had been pacing that platform for at least forty minutes.

He spied her at the same time and came rushing to greet her, both hands outstretched.

“And here you be!” he exclaimed with enthusiasm.

Mary laughed happily.

“Yes, Uncle Shad, here I am,” she said.  “Are you glad to see me?”

Shadrach looked at her.

“Jumpin’!” was the only answer he made, but it was fervent and sufficient.

They rode home together in the old buggy.  As they reached the corner by the store Mary expected the vehicle to be brought to a halt at the curb, but it was not.  The Captain chirruped to the horse and drove straight on.

“Why, Uncle Shad!” exclaimed the girl.  “Aren’t you going to stop?”

“Eh?  Stop?  What for?”

“Why, to see Uncle Zoeth, of course.  He’s at the store, isn’t he?”

Shadrach shook his head.

“No, he ain’t,” he said.  “He’s to home.”

Mary was amazed and a trifle alarmed.  One partner of Hamilton and Company was there in the buggy with her.  By all the rules of precedent and South Harniss business the other should have been at the store.  She knew that her uncles had employed no clerk or assistant since she left.

“But—­but is Uncle Zoeth sick?” she asked.

“Sick?  No, no, course he ain’t sick.  If he didn’t have no better sense than to get sick the day you come home I’d—­I’d—­I don’t know’s I wouldn’t drown him.  He ain’t sick—­unless,” he added, as an afterthought, “he’s got Saint Vitus dance from hoppin’ up and down to look out of the window, watchin’ for us.”