“You bet you it’s right for one of us, Miss Martha,” she declared.  “And you ain’t the one, neither.  My Lord of Isrul, if I don’t feel some better’n I did when I come into this room!  Whew!  My savin’ soul!  Zach Bloomer he says to me this mornin’.  ’What’s the matter, Posy?’ he says.  ’Seems to me you look sort of wilted lately.  You better brace up,’ he says, ‘or folks’ll be callin’ you a faded flower.’  ‘Well,’ says I, ’I may be faded, but there’s one old p’ison ivy around here that’s fresh enough to make up.’  Oh, I squashed him all righty, but I never took no comfort out of doin’ it.  I ain’t took no comfort for the last two, three days.  But now—­ Whew!”

The letter to Cousin Gussie was written that very afternoon.  Mr. Bangs wrote it, with helpful suggestions, many of them, from Miss Phipps.  At Martha’s suggestion the envelope was marked “Personal.”

“I suppose it is foolish of me,” she said, “but somehow I hate to have my affairs talked all over that office.  Even when I was a little girl, and things went wrong in school, I used to save up my cryin’ until I got home.  I’m the same now.  This Development Company milk is spilled, and, whether any of it can be saved or not, there is no use callin’ a crowd to look at the puddle.  If your cousin thinks it’s necessary to tell other Boston folks, I presume he will, but we won’t tell anybody but him.”

Galusha hoped to receive an answer the following day, but none came.  Nor did it come the next day, nor the next.  That week passed and no reply came from Cousin Gussie.  Galusha began to worry a little, but Miss Phipps did not.

“Perhaps he’s away for a day or two, sick or somethin’,” she suggested.  “Perhaps he’s lookin’ up some facts about the Development Company.  Perhaps he hasn’t had time to read the letter at all yet.  Mercy me, you mustn’t expect as busy a man as the head of Cabot, Bancroft and Cabot to drop everything else and run around in circles attendin’ to my little two-for-a-cent business!”

The relative of the great man admitted that there was reason in this line of argument, but he was impatient, nevertheless.  His daily walks now included trips to the post office.  On one of those trips he caught a glimpse of Mr. Pulcifer’s hemispherical countenance through its wearer’s office window, and, on the spur of the moment’s impulse, went in.

Horatio, who was smoking his customary cigar, reading a political circular and humming “Beautiful Lady” all at the same time, looked up from the reading and greeted him boisterously.

“Well, well, well!” exclaimed Raish.  “If it ain’t the Perfessor again!  Welcome to amongst our midst, as the feller said.  Have a chair, Perfessor.  How’s things in the graveyard these days?  Kind of dead around there, eh?  Haw, haw, haw!”

He enjoyed his joke and laugh and Galusha smiled because he felt that politeness required it.  When the laugh and smile had run their course, he endeavored to come to the point.