So she was planning the making over and enlarging of the store front, putting in larger and better windows and strengthening the platform.  She was discussing the plan with Shadrach and Zoeth when John Keith entered.  The Keiths were leaving South Harniss rather early that year and the head of the family had dropped in to say good-by.  Mr. Keith’s liking for Mary was as strong as ever, and for her uncles he had, by this time, a very real regard, a feeling which was reciprocated by them.

Conversation began in the way the majority of conversations begin, with a discussion of the weather, its recent past, present, and probable future, shifted to the tea-room and its success and then to the visitor’s recent trip to New York, from which city he had just returned.  It was near the noon hour and there were few customers to interrupt.  Those who did come were taken care of by Mr. Crocker.

“Anything new happenin’ over there?” inquired Captain Shadrach, asking news of the metropolis exactly as he would have asked concerning the gossip of Harniss Center.  “Meet anybody you knew, did you?”

Keith smiled.  “Why, yes,” he said.  “I met the people I went to see.  Mine was a business trip.  I didn’t meet anyone unexpectedly, if that’s what you mean.”

The Captain nodded.  “Didn’t get down on South Street, did you?” he asked.  “No, I thought not.  If you had you’d have met plenty.  When I was goin’ to sea I bet I never went cruisin’ down South Street in my life that I didn’t run afoul of somebody I wan’t expectin’ to.  Greatest place for meetin’ folks in the world, I cal’late South Street is.  Lots of seafarin’ men have told me so.”

Keith’s smile broadened as he was handed this nugget of wisdom.  Then he said: 

“You remind me, Captain, that I did meet someone, after all.  In Boston, not in New York, and I met him only yesterday.  It was someone you know, too, and Mary here used to know him quite well, I think—­young Crawford Smith, Sam’s Harvard friend.  He visited us here in South Harniss one summer.”

Shadrach was the only one of the trio of listeners who made any comment at all on this speech.  Even he did not speak for a moment, glancing apprehensively at Mary before doing so.  Mary said nothing, and Zoeth, leaning back in his chair, his face hidden from his partner’s gaze by the end of the counter, did not speak.

“Sho!” exclaimed the Captain.  “Sho!  So you met him, did you!  In Boston?  That’s funny.  I had an idea he was out West somewheres.”

“So did I. The last I heard concerning him he had given up his studies in the East here—­he was studying medicine, as perhaps you know—­and had gone back to his home in Nevada.  His father, who was not at all well, asked him to do so.  He had written Sam once or twice from out there.  So I was surprised enough to see him in Boston.  I met him in the South Station and we chatted for a few moments.  He told me that his father was dead.”