The main street of South Harniss looked natural enough as the motor car buzzed along it. It was but a few months since Mary had been there, yet it seemed ever so much more. She felt so much older than on those Christmas holidays. When the store of Hamilton and Company came in sight she sank down on the back seat in order not to be seen. She knew her uncles were, in all probability, there at the store, and she wished to see Isaiah and talk with him before meeting them.
Isaiah was in the kitchen by the cookstove when she opened the door.
He turned, saw her, and stood petrified. Mary entered and closed the door behind her. By that time Mr. Chase had recovered sufficiently from his ossification to speak.
"Eh--eh--by time!" he gasped. "I snum if it ain't you!"
Mary nodded. "Isaiah," she asked quickly, "are you alone? Are my uncles, both of them, at the store?"
But the cook and steward had not yet completely got over the effect of the surprise. He still stared at her.
"It IS you, ain't it!" he stammered. "I--I--by time, I do believe you've come home, same as I asked you to."
"Of course I've come home. How in the world could I be here if I hadn't? DON'T stare at me like that, with your mouth open like a--like a codfish. Tell me, are Uncle Shad and Uncle Zoeth at the store?"
"Eh-- Yes, I cal'late they be. Ain't neither of 'em come home to dinner yet. I'm expectin' one of 'em 'most any minute. I'll run up and fetch 'em. Say! How in the nation did you get here this time of day?"
"I shall tell you by and by. No, I don't want you to get my uncles.
I want to talk with you alone first. Now, Isaiah, sit down! Sit down in that chair. I want you to tell me just how bad things are.
Tell me everything, all you know about it, and don't try to make the situation better than it is. And please HURRY!"
Isaiah, bewildered but obedient, sat down. The command to hurry had the effect of making him so nervous that, although he talked enough to have described the most complicated situation, his ideas were badly snarled and Mary had to keep interrupting in order to untangle them. And, after all, what he had to tell was not very definite.
Business was bad at the store; that was plain to everyone in town.
"All hands" were trading at the new stores where prices were lower, stocks bigger and more up-to-date, and selling methods far, far in advance of those of Hamilton and Company.
"About the only customers that stick by us," declared Isaiah, "are folks like 'Rastus Young and the rest of the deadbeats. THEY wouldn't leave us for nothin'--and nothin's what they pay, too, drat 'em!"
The partners had not told him of their troubles, but telling was not necessary. He had seen and heard enough.
"They are right on the ragged edge of goin' on the rocks," vowed Isaiah. "Zoeth, he's that thin and peaked 'twould make a sick pullet look fleshy alongside of him. And Cap'n Shad goes around with his hands rammed down in his beckets--"
"In his what?"
"In his britches pockets, and he don't scurcely speak a word for hours at a stretch. And they're up all times of the night, fussin' over account books and writin' letters and I don't know what all.
It's plain enough what's comin'. Everybody in town is on to it.
Why, I was up to the store t'other day settin' outside on the steps and Ab Bacheldor came along. He hates Cap'n Shad worse'n pizen, you know. 'Hello, Isaiah!' he says to me, he says. 'Is that you?' he says. 'Course it's me,' says I. Who'd you think 'twas?' 'I didn't know but it might be the sheriff,' he says. 'I understand he's settin' round nowadays just a-waitin'.' And Zoeth was right within hearin', too!"
"Oh!" exclaimed Mary indignantly.
"Yup, that's what he said," went on Isaiah. "But I got in one dig on my own hook. 'The sheriff don't wait much down to your house, Abner, does he?' says I. 'You bet he don't,' says he; 'he don't have to.' 'Well, he'd starve to death if he waited there long,' says I. Ho, ho! His wife's the stingiest woman about her cookin' that there is on the Cape. Why, one time she took a notion she'd keep boarders and Henry Ryder, that drives the fruit cart, he started to board there. But he only stayed two days. The fust day they had biled eggs and the next day they had soup made out of the shells. Course that probably ain't true--Henry's an awful liar--but all the same--"
"Never mind Henry Ryder, or Abner Bacheldor, either," interrupted Mary. "How did you happen to send for me, Isaiah?"
"Eh? Oh, that just came of itself, as you might say. I kept gettin' more and more tittered up and worried as I see how things was goin' and I kept wishin' you was here, if 'twas only to have somebody to talk it over with. But I didn't dast to write and when you was home Christmas I never dast to say nothin' because Cap'n Shad had vowed he'd butcher me if I told tales to you about any home troubles. That's it, you see! All through this their main idea has been not to trouble you. 'She mustn't know anything or she'll worry,' says Zoeth, and Cap'n Shad he says, 'That's so.' They think an awful sight of you, Mary-'Gusta."
Mary did not trust herself to look up.
"I know," she said. "Go on, Isaiah."
"Well, I kept thinkin' and thinkin' and one day last week Ezra Hopkins, that's the butcher cart feller, he and me was talkin' and he says: 'Trade ain't very brisk up to the store, is it?' he says.
'Everybody says 'tain't.' 'Then if everybody knows so much what d'ye ask me for?' says I. 'Oh, don't get mad,' says he. 'But I tell you this, Isaiah,' he says, 'if Mary-'Gusta Lathrop hadn't gone away to that fool Boston school things would have been different with Hamilton and Company. She's a smart girl and a smart business woman. I believe she'd have saved the old fellers,' he says. 'She was up-to-date and she had the know-how,' says he. Well, I kept thinkin' what he said and--and--well, I wrote. For the land sakes don't tell Shad nor Zoeth that I wrote, but I'm glad I done it. I don't know's you can do anything, I don't know's anybody can, but I'm mighty glad you're here, Mary-'Gusta."
