EXIT MR. JOHN SMITH
Early in July Mr. Smith took his departure from Hillerton. He made a
farewell call upon each of the Blaisdell families, and thanked them
heartily for all their kindness in assisting him with his Blaisdell
book.
The Blaisdells, one and all, said they were very sorry to have him go.
Miss Flora frankly wiped her eyes, and told Mr. Smith she could never,
never thank him enough for what he had done for her. Mellicent, too,
with shy eyes averted, told him she should never forget what he had
done for her—and for Donald.
James and Flora and Frank—and even Jane!—said that they would like to
have one of the Blaisdell books, when they were published, to hand down
in the family. Flora took out her purse and said that she would pay for
hers now; but Mr. Smith hastily, and with some evident embarrassment,
refused the money, saying that he could not tell yet what the price of
the book would be.
All the Blaisdells, except Frank, Fred, and Bessie, went to the station
to see Mr. Smith off. They said they wanted to. They told him he was
just like one of the family, anyway, and they declared they hoped he
would come back soon. Frank telephoned him that he would have gone,
too, if he had not had so much to do at the store.
Mr. Smith seemed pleased at all this attention—he seemed, indeed,
quite touched; but he seemed also embarrassed—in fact, he seemed often
embarrassed during those last few days at Hillerton.
Miss Maggie Duff did not go to the station to see Mr. Smith off. Miss
Flora, on her way home, stopped at the Duff cottage and reproached Miss
Maggie for the delinquency.
“Nonsense! Why should I go?” laughed Miss Maggie.
“Why _shouldn’t_ you?” retorted Miss Flora. “All the rest of us
did, ’most.”
“Well, that’s all right. You’re Blaisdells—but I’m not, you know.”
“You’re just as good as one, Maggie Duff! Besides, hasn’t that man
boarded here for over a year, and paid you good money, too?”
“Why, y-yes, of course.”
“Well, then, I don’t think it would have hurt you any to show him this
last little attention. He’ll think you don’t like him, or—or are mad
about something, when all the rest of us went.”
“Nonsense, Flora!”
“Well, then, if—Why, Maggie Duff, you’re _blushing_!” she broke
off, peering into Miss Maggie’s face in a way that did not tend to
lessen the unmistakable color that was creeping to her forehead. “You
_are_ blushing! I declare, if you were twenty years younger, and
I didn’t know better, I should say that—” She stopped abruptly, then
plunged on, her countenance suddenly alight with a new idea. “_Now_ I
know why you didn’t go to the station, Maggie Duff! That man proposed
to you, and you refused him!” she triumphed.
“Flora!” gasped Miss Maggie, her face scarlet.
“He did, I know he did! Hattie always said it would be a match—from the
very first, when he came here to your house.”
“_Flora!_” gasped Miss Maggie again, looking about her very much as if
she were meditating flight.
“Well, she did—but I didn’t believe it. Now I know. You refused
him—now, didn’t you?”
“Certainly not!” Miss Maggie caught her breath a little convulsively.
“Honest?”
“Flora! Stop this silly talk right now. I have answered you once. I
shan’t again.”
“Hm-m.” Miss Flora fell back in her chair. “Well, I suppose you didn’t,
then, if you say so. And I don’t need to ask if you accepted him. You
didn’t, of course, or you’d have been there to see him off. And he
wouldn’t have gone then, anyway, probably. So he didn’t ask you, I
suppose. Well, I never did believe, like Hattie did, that—”
“Flora,” interrupted Miss Maggie desperately, “_Will_ you stop talking in
that absurd way? Listen, I did not care to go to the station to-day. I
am very busy. I am going away next week. I am going—to Chicago.”
“To _chicago_—you!” Miss Flora came erect in her chair.
“Yes, for a visit. I’m going to see my old classmate, Nellie
Maynard—Mrs. Tyndall.”
“Maggie!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Why, n-nothing. It’s lovely, of course, only—only I—I’m so surprised!
You never go anywhere.”
“All the more reason why I should, then. It’s time I did,” smiled Miss
Maggie. Miss Maggie was looking more at ease now.
“When are you going?”
“Next Wednesday. I heard from Nellie last night. She is expecting me
then.”
“How perfectly splendid! I’m so glad! And I do hope you can _do_
it, and that it won’t peter out at the last minute, same’s most of
your good times do. Poor Maggie! And you’ve had such a hard life—and
your boarder leaving, too! That’ll make a lot of difference in your
pocketbook, won’t it? But, Maggie, you’ll have to have some new
clothes.”
“Of course. I’ve been shopping this afternoon. I’ve got to have—oh,
lots of things.”
“Of course you have. And, Maggie,”—Miss Flora’s face grew
eager,—“please, _please_, won’t you let me help you a little—about
those clothes? And get some nice ones—some real nice ones, for once.
You _know_ how I’d love to! Please, Maggie, there’s a good girl!”
“Thank you, no, dear,” refused Miss Maggie, shaking her head with a
smile. “But I appreciate your kindness just the same—indeed, I do!”
“If you wouldn’t be so horrid proud,” pouted Miss Flora.
But Miss Maggie stopped her with a gesture.
“No, no,—listen! I—I have something to tell you. I was going to tell
you soon, anyway, and I’ll tell it now. I _have_ money, dear,—lots
of it now.”
“You _have_ money!”
“Yes. Father’s Cousin George died two months ago.”
“The rich one, in Alaska?”
“Yes; and to father’s daughter he left—fifty thousand dollars.”
“_Mag_-gie!”
“And I never even _saw_ him! But he loved father, you know, years
ago, and father loved him.”
“But had you ever heard from him—late years?”
“Not much. Father was very angry because he went to Alaska in the first
place, you know, and they haven’t ever written very often.”
“Fifty thousand! And you’ve got it now?”
“Not yet—all of it. They sent me a thousand—just for pin money, they
said. The lawyer’s written several times, and he’s been here once. I
believe it’s all to come next month.”
“Oh, I’m so glad, Maggie,” breathed Flora. “I’m so glad! I don’t know
of anybody I’d rather see take a little comfort in life than you!”
At the door, fifteen minutes later, Miss Flora said again how glad she
was; but she added wistfully:—
“I’m sure I don’t know, though, what I’m going to do all summer without
you. Just think how lonesome we’ll be—you gone to Chicago, Hattie and
Jim and all their family moved to Plainville, and even Mr. Smith gone,
too! And I think we’re going to miss Mr. Smith a whole lot, too. He was
a real nice man. Don’t you think so, Maggie?”
“Indeed, I do think he was a very nice man!” declared Miss Maggie.
“Now, Flora, I shall want you to go shopping with me lots. Can you?”
And Miss Flora, eagerly entering into Miss Maggie’s discussion of
frills and flounces, failed to notice that Miss Maggie had dropped the
subject of Mr. Smith somewhat hastily.
Hillerton had much to talk about during those summer days. Mr. Smith’s
going had created a mild discussion—the “ancestor feller” was well
known and well liked in the town. But even his departure did not arouse
the interest that was bestowed upon the removal of the James Blaisdells
to Plainville; and this, in turn, did not cause so great an excitement
as did the news that Miss Maggie Duff had inherited fifty thousand
dollars and had gone to Chicago to spend it. And the fact that nearly
all who heard this promptly declared that they hoped she _would_
spend a good share of it—in Chicago, or elsewhere—on herself, showed
pretty well just where Miss Maggie Duff stood in the hearts of
Hillerton.
. . . . . .
It was early in September that Miss Flora had the letter from Miss
Maggie. Not but that she had received letters from Miss Maggie
before, but that the contents of this one made it at once, to all the
Blaisdells, “the letter.”
Miss Flora began to read it, gave a little cry, and sprang to her feet.
Standing, her breath suspended, she finished it. Five minutes later,
gloves half on and hat askew, she was hurrying across the common to her
brother Frank’s home.
“Jane, Jane,” she panted, as soon as she found her sister-in-law. “I’ve
had a letter from Maggie. Mr. Stanley G. Fulton has come back. _He’s
come back!_”
“Come back! Alive, you mean? Oh, my goodness gracious! What’ll Hattie
do? She’s just been living on having that money. And us, with all we’ve
lost, too! But, then, maybe we wouldn’t have got it, anyway. My stars!
And Maggie wrote you? Where’s the letter?”
“There! And I never thought to bring it,” ejaculated Miss Flora
vexedly. “But, never mind! I can tell you all she said. She didn’t
write much. She said it would be in all the Eastern papers right
away, of course, but she wanted to tell us first, so we wouldn’t be
so surprised. He’s just come. Walked into his lawyer’s office without
a telegram, or anything. Said he didn’t want any fuss made. Mr.
Tyndall brought home the news that night in an ‘Extra’; but that’s all
it told—just that Mr. Stanley G. Fulton, the multi-millionaire who
disappeared nearly two years ago on an exploring trip to South America,
had come back alive and well. Then it told all about the two letters
he left, and the money he left to us, and all that, Maggie said; and
it talked a lot about how lucky it was that he got back just in time
before the other letter had to be opened next November. But it didn’t
say any more about his trip, or anything. The morning papers will have
more, Maggie said, probably.”
“Yes, of course, of course,” nodded Jane, rolling the corner of her
upper apron nervously. (Since the forty-thousand-dollar loss Jane had
gone back to her old habit of wearing two aprons.) “Where _do_ you
suppose he’s been all this time? Was he lost or just exploring?”
“Maggie said it wasn’t known—that the paper didn’t say. It was an
‘Extra’ anyway, and it just got in the bare news of his return. But
we’ll know, of course. The papers here will tell us. Besides, Maggie’ll
write again about it, I’m sure. Poor Maggie! I’m so glad she’s having
such a good time!”
“Yes, of course, of course,” nodded Jane again nervously. “Say, Flora,
I wonder—do you suppose _we’ll_ ever hear from him? He left us
all that money—he knows that, of course. He can’t ask for it back—the
lawyer said he couldn’t do that! Don’t you remember? But, I wonder—do
you suppose we ought to write him and—and thank him?”
“Oh, mercy!” exclaimed Miss Flora, aghast. “Mercy me, Jane! I’d be
scared to death to do such a thing as that. Oh, you don’t think we’ve
got to do _that_?” Miss Flora had grown actually pale.
Jane frowned.
“I don’t know. We’d want to do what was right and proper, of course.
But I don’t see—” She paused helplessly.
Miss Flora gave a sudden hysterical little laugh.
“Well, I don’t see how we’re going to find out what’s proper, in this
case,” she giggled. “We can’t write to a magazine, same as I did when
I wanted to know how to answer invitations and fix my knives and forks
on the table. We _can’t_ write to them, ’cause nothing like this
ever happened before, and they wouldn’t know what to say. How’d we look
writing, ‘Please, dear Editor, when a man wills you a hundred thousand
dollars and then comes to life again, is it proper or not proper to
write and thank him?’ They’d think we was crazy, and they’d have reason
to! For my part, I—”
The telephone bell rang sharply, and Jane rose to answer it. She was
gone some time. When she came back she was even more excited.
“It was Frank. He’s heard it. It was in the papers to-night.”
“Did it tell anything more?”
“Not much, I guess. Still, there was some. He’s going to bring it home.
It’s ’most supper-time. Why don’t you wait?” she questioned, as Miss
Flora got hastily to her feet.
Miss Flora shook her head.
“I can’t. I left everything just as it was and ran, when I got the
letter. I’ll get a paper myself on the way home. I’m going to call up
Hattie, too, on the long distance. My, it’s ’most as exciting as it was
when it first came,—the money, I mean,—isn’t it?” panted Miss Flora as
she hurried away.
The Blaisdells bought many papers during the next few days. But even by
the time that the Stanley G. Fulton sensation had dwindled to a short
paragraph in an obscure corner of a middle page, they (and the public
in general) were really little the wiser, except for these bare facts:—
Stanley G. Fulton had arrived at a South American hotel, from the
interior, had registered as S. Fulton, frankly to avoid publicity,
and had taken immediate passage to New York. Arriving at New York,
still to avoid publicity, he had not telegraphed his attorneys, but
had taken the sleeper for Chicago, and had fortunately not met any one
who recognized him until his arrival in that city. He had brought home
several fine specimens of Incan textiles and potteries: and he declared
that he had had a very enjoyable and profitable trip. Beyond that he
would say nothing. He did not care to talk of his experiences, he said.
For a time, of course, his return was made much of. Fake interviews
and rumors of threatened death and disaster in impenetrable jungles
made frequent appearance; but in an incredibly short time the flame of
interest died from want of fuel to feed upon; and, as Mr. Stanley G.
Fulton himself had once predicted, the matter was soon dismissed as
merely another of the multi-millionaire’s well-known eccentricities.
All of this the Blaisdells heard from Miss Maggie in addition to seeing
it in the newspapers. But very soon, from Miss Maggie, they began to
learn more. Before a fortnight had passed, Miss Flora received another
letter from Chicago that sent her flying as before to her sister-in-law.
“Jane, Jane, Maggie’s _met him_!” she cried, breathlessly bursting
into the kitchen where Jane was paring the apples that she would not
trust to the maid’s more wasteful knife.
“Met him! Met who?”
“Mr. Fulton. She’s _talked_ with him! She wrote me all about it.”
“_Our_ Mr. Fulton?”
“Yes.”
“_Flora!_” With a hasty twirl of a now reckless knife, Jane finished the
last apple, set the pan on the table before the maid, and hurried her
visitor into the living-room. “Now, tell me quick—what did she say? Is
he nice? Did she like him? Did he know she belonged to us?”
“Yes—yes—everything,” nodded Miss Flora, sinking into a chair. “She
liked him real well, she said and he knows all about that she belongs
to us. She said he was real interested in us. Oh, I hope she didn’t
tell him about—Fred!”
“And that awful gold-mine stock,” moaned Jane. “But she wouldn’t—I know
she wouldn’t!”
“Of course she wouldn’t,” cried Miss Flora. “’Tisn’t like Maggie one
bit! She’d only tell the nice things, I’m sure. And, of course, she’d
tell him how pleased we were with the money!”
“Yes, of course, of course. And to think she’s met him—really met him!”
breathed Jane. “Mellicent!” She turned an excited face to her daughter,
who had just entered the room. “What do you think? Aunt Flora’s just
had a letter from Aunt Maggie, and she’s met Mr. Fulton—actually
_talked_ with him!”
“Really? Oh, how perfectly splendid! Is he nice? Did she like him?”
Miss Flora laughed.
“That’s just what your mother asked. Yes, he’s real nice, your Aunt
Maggie says, and she likes him very much.”
“But how’d she do it? How’d she happen to meet him?” demanded Jane.
“Well, it seems he knew Mr. Tyndall, and Mr. Tyndall brought him home
one night and introduced him to his wife and Maggie; and since then
he’s been very nice to them. He’s taken them out in his automobile, and
taken them to the theater twice.”
“That’s because she belongs to us, of course,” nodded Jane wisely.
“Yes, I suppose so,” agreed Flora. “And I think it’s very kind of him.”
“Pooh!” sniffed Mellicent airily. “_I_ think he does it because he
_wants_ to. You never did appreciate Aunt Maggie. I’ll warrant
she’s nicer and sweeter and—and, yes, _prettier_ than lots of
those old Chicago women. Aunt Maggie looked positively _handsome_
that day she left here last July. She looked so—so absolutely happy!
Probably he _likes_ to take her to places. Anyhow, I’m glad she’s
having one good time before she dies.”
“Yes, so am I, my dear. We all are,” sighed Miss Flora. “Poor Maggie!”
“I only wish he’d marry her and—and give her a good time all her life,”
avowed Mellicent, lifting her chin.
“Marry her!” exclaimed two scornful voices.
“Well, why not? She’s good enough for him,” bridled Mellicent. “Aunt
Maggie’s good enough for anybody!”
“Of course she is, child!” laughed Miss Flora. “Maggie’s a saint—if
ever there was one.”
“Yes, but I shouldn’t call her a _marrying_ saint,” smiled Jane.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” frowned Miss Flora thoughtfully.
“Hattie always declared there’d be a match between her and Mr. Smith,
you know.”
“Yes. But there wasn’t one, was there?” twitted Jane. “Well, then, I
shall stick to my original statement that Maggie Duff is a saint, all
right, but not a marrying one—unless some one marries her now for her
money, of course.”
“As if Aunt Maggie’d stand for that!” scoffed Mellicent. “Besides, she
wouldn’t have to! Aunt Maggie’s good enough to be married for herself.”
“There, there, child, just because you are a love-sick little piece
of romance just now, you needn’t think everybody else is,” her mother
reproved her a little sharply.
But Mellicent only laughed merrily as she disappeared into her own room.
“Speaking of Mr. Smith, I wonder where he is, and if he’ll ever come
back here,” mused Miss Flora, aloud. “I wish he would. He was a very
nice man, and I liked him.”
“Goodness, Flora, _you_ aren’t, getting romantic, too, are you?”
teased her sister-in-law.
“Nonsense, Jane!” ejaculated Miss Flora sharply, buttoning up her coat.
“I’m no more romantic than—than poor Maggie herself is!”
Two weeks later, to a day, came Miss Maggie’s letter announcing her
engagement to Mr. Stanley G. Fulton, and saying that she was to be
married in Chicago before Christmas.