Mr. Green seized the opportunity thus offered.  Indeed, she might have time, all the time she wanted.  Anything in his power to do—­and so on.  Being a bachelor and something of an elderly beau who prided himself upon making a good impression with the sex, it had annoyed him greatly, the memory of his mistake.  Also he had been distinctly taken with Mary and was anxious to reinstate himself in her opinion.  So his willingness to atone was even eager.

“As it happens,” he said, “I am not at all busy this afternoon.  I can give you the rest of the day, if you wish.  Now what can I do for you?”

Mary explained that she had come to speak with him concerning her uncles’ business affairs, his house being Hamilton and Company’s largest creditor.  She told of her investigations, of the condition in which she had found the accounts, and of her determination to remain at South Harniss and work for the upbuilding of the concern.

“Of course I am not a business person like yourself, Mr. Green,” she said.  “I am only a girl.  But I worked in my uncles’ store and, in a way, managed it for two years or more before I came to Boston to school.  Beside that I have talked during these last few days with some of South Harniss’s most prominent people—­permanent residents, not summer people.  From what they and others tell me I am convinced that the sole reason why my uncles’ business has fallen behind is because of a lack of keeping up to the times in the face of competition.  Everyone likes Uncle Zoeth and Uncle Shadrach and wishes them well—­they couldn’t help that, you know.”

She made this assertion with such evident pride and with such absolute confidence that Mr. Green, although inclined to smile, felt it might be poor judgment to do so.  So he agreed that there was no doubt of Shadrach’s and Zoeth’s universal popularity.

“Yes,” went on Mary, “they are dears, both of them, and they think everyone else is as honest as they are, which is a mistake, of course.  So some people impose on them and don’t pay their bills.  I intend to stop that.”

She evidently expected her listener to make some comment, so he said, “Oh, indeed!”

“Yes,” continued Mary.  “I intend to stop their trusting everyone under the sun and I shall try my hardest to collect from those they have already trusted.  There is almost enough due to pay every bill we owe, and I believe two-thirds of that is collectible if one really goes after it.”

“And you will go after it, I presume?”

“I most certainly shall.  You are smiling, Mr. Green.  I suppose it sounds like a joke, a girl like myself making such statements about things men are supposed to understand and women not to understand at all.  It isn’t a joke in this case, because I think I understand my uncles business better than they do.  I think I can collect what is owed us, pay what we owe, and make money there in South Harniss.  But to do that I must have time and, by and by, credit, for we need goods.  And that is what I came to talk to you about.”