“Neither can I, not even in neckties.  There, there, Shadrach!  I know you.  You talk about disgrace and such, but you’re as crazy about Mary-’Gusta as—­as—­”

“As you are, eh?  Well, maybe I am, Zoeth.  When she was first willed to us, as you might say, I used to wonder how we’d ever get along with her; now I wonder how we got along without her.  If she should be—­er—­took away from us, I don’t know—­”

“Sshh, shh, Shadrach!  Don’t talk about anything like that.”

Mary-’Gusta was making good progress at school.  At fourteen she graduated from the grammar school and in the fall was to enter the high school.  She was popular among her mates, although she never sought popularity.

At picnics and church sociables she had always a small circle about her and the South Harniss boys were prominent in that circle.  But Mary-’Gusta, although she liked boys and girls well enough, never showed a liking for one more than the other and she was too busy at the house and in the store to have her young friends hanging about.  They bothered her, she said.  As for having a particular friend of the other sex, which some of the girls in her class no older than she seemed to think a necessary proof of being in their teens, she laughed at the idea.  She had her adopted uncles and Isaiah to take care of and boy beaux were silly.  Talking about them as these girls did was sillier still.

That summer—­the summer preceding Mary-’Gusta’s fifteenth birthday—­was the liveliest South Harniss had known.  The village was beginning to feel the first symptoms of its later boom as a summer resort.  A number of cottages had been built for people from Boston and New York and Chicago, and there was talk of a new hotel.  Also there was talk of several new stores, but Hamilton and Company were inclined to believe this merely talk and did not worry about it.  Their trade was unusually brisk and the demand for Mary-’Gusta’s services as salesgirl interfered considerably with her duties as assistant housekeeper.

One fine, clear July morning she came up to the store early in order that the partners might go down to the house for breakfast.  They had gone and she had just finished placing on the counters and in other likely spots about the store sheets of sticky fly paper.  Flies are a nuisance in South Harniss in midsummer and Captain Shad detested them.  Just as the last sheet was laid in place, a young fellow and a girl came in.  Mary-’Gusta recognized them both.  The girl was the seventeen-year-old daughter of a wealthy summer resident, a Mr. Keith from Chicago.  The Keiths had a fine cottage on the bluff at the other end of the village.  The young chap with her was, so gossip reported, a college friend of her brother.  His surname was prosaic enough, being Smith, but his first name was Crawford and his home was somewhere in the Far West.  He was big and good-looking, and the Boston papers mentioned him as one of the most promising backs on the Harvard Freshman eleven.  Next year, so the sporting writers opined, he would almost certainly make the Varsity team.  Most of Mary-’Gusta’s feminine friends and acquaintances rated him “perfectly splendid” and regarded Edna Keith with envious eyes.