Mary shook her head.  “They wouldn’t like it a bit,” she said.  “That precious old store is the joy of their lives.  Without it they wouldn’t know what to do; they would be as lost and lonesome and miserable as a pair of stray kittens.  No, if we take care of them we must take care of Hamilton and Company, too.  And we mustn’t let them know we’re doing it, either,” she added with decision.

Crawford looked troubled.  “I suppose you’re right,” he said; “but it is likely to be something of a puzzle, their problem.  It will mean, of course, that you and I must go and leave them.”

“Oh, no, we can’t do that—­not for some time, at any rate.”

“It seems to me we must.  We have decided, you and I, that I shall go back West, finish my preparatory work, then come here and marry you.  After that—­well, after that we have decided that I am to locate somewhere or other and begin to practice my profession.  You’ll go with me then, I presume?”

“Silly!  Of course I will.”

“I hoped so.  But if we can’t leave your uncles and they won’t leave the store, what are we going to do?  Put the store on a truck and take it with us?”

She looked up at him and smiled.  “I have a plan,” she said.  “I haven’t quite worked it out yet, but if it does work I think it’s going to be a very nice plan indeed.  No, I’m not going to tell you what it is yet, so you mustn’t tease.  You don’t mind my planning for you and bossing you and all that sort of thing, do you?  I hope you don’t, because I can’t help it.  It’s the way I’m made, I think.”

“I don’t mind.  Boss away.”

“Oh, I shall.  I’m like that Scotch girl in the play Mrs. Wyeth took me to see in Boston—­Bunty, her name was.  She made me think of myself more than once, although she was ever so much more clever.  At the end of the play she said to her sweetheart, ’William, I must tell ye this:  if I marry ye I’ll aye be managin’ ye.’  She meant she couldn’t help it.  Neither can I. I’m afraid I’m a born manager.”

Crawford stooped and kissed her.

“Do you remember William’s answer?” he asked.  “I do.  It was:  ’Bunty, I’ll glory in my shame.’  Manage all you like, my lady, I’ll glory in it.”

The plan did work out and it was this:  Doctor Harley, who had practiced medicine for forty-one years in South Harniss, was thinking of retiring after two more years of active work.  He was willing to sell out his practice at the end of that time.  He liked Crawford, had taken a fancy to him on the occasion of his first visit to the town when he was a guest of the Keiths.  Crawford, after Mary had suggested the idea to him, called upon the old doctor.  Before the end of the week it was arranged that after Crawford’s final season of college and hospital work he was to come to South Harniss, work with Doctor Harley as assistant for another year, and then buy out the practice and, as Captain Shad said, “put up his own shingle.”