She had brought with her copies of the Hamilton and Company trial balance, also a list of the firm’s debtors and creditors.  These she put upon the desk before Mr. Green and ran a finger down the pages with explanatory remarks such as, “This is good, I know,” “This can be collected but it may take a lawyer to get it,” or, as in the case of ’Rastus Young’s long-standing indebtedness, “This isn’t worth anything and shouldn’t be counted.”

“You see,” she said, in conclusion, “we aren’t in such a very bad state; it isn’t hopeless, anyway.  Now here are the accounts we owe.  Yours is the largest.  Here are the others.  All these bills are going to be paid, just as I said, but they can’t be paid at all unless I have time.  I have been thinking, thinking very hard, Mr. Green—­”

Green nodded.  “I can see that,” he put in, good-naturedly.

“Yes.  Well, this is what I want to ask you:  Will you give us six months more to pay the whole of this bill in?  I don’t think we shall need so much time, but I want to be sure.  And if at the end of two months we have paid half of it, will you give us credit for another small bill of goods for the summer season, so that we may be stocked and ready?  The summer is our best season, you see,” she added.

Mr. Green nodded.  Her businesslike manner he found amusing, although he by no means shared her confidence in the future.

“We shall be very glad to extend the time,” he said.  “You may remember I told you the other evening that so far as our house was concerned, we should probably be willing to sell your uncles indefinitely, for old times’ sake.”

His visitor frowned.

“We are not asking it for old times’ sake,” she said.  “It is the new times I am interested in.  And please understand this isn’t sentiment but business.  If you do not believe what I ask to be a safe business risk, that one your firm would be justified in accepting from anybody, then you mustn’t do it.”

Mr. Green hesitated.  “Suppose I do not accept that risk,” he said; “what then?”

“Then I shall go and see some other creditors, the principal ones, and make them similar propositions.”

“And suppose they don’t accept?”

“I think they will, most of them.  If they don’t—­well, then there is another way.  My uncles own their house and store.  They have been thinking of selling their property to pay their debts.  I should hate to have them sell, and I don’t believe it is necessary.  I have been talking with Judge Baxter over at Ostable—­I stopped there on my way to Boston—­and he suggested that they might mortgage and raise money that way.  It could be done, couldn’t it?  Mortgages are a kind of business I don’t know anything about.  They sound horrid.”