Wedderburn & Hamilton, the bankers?" she asks, eager.

"That's him," says I. "Why? Do you know him? Did his ma used to do
washing at your house?"

She laughed, but her face was all lit up and her eyes fairly shone. I
could have--but there! never mind.

"Oh, no," she says, "I don't know him, but I know of him--everybody
does."

Well, everybody did, that's a fact, and the way Marm Bounderby and
Maizie was togged out at the supper-table was a sin and a shame. And the
way they poured gush over that bald-headed broker was enough to make him
slip out of his chair. Talk about "fishers of men"! them Bounderbys was
a whole seiner's crew in themselves.

But what surprised me was Mabel Seabury. She was dressed up, too; not
in the Bounderbys' style--collar-bones and diamonds--but in plain white
with lace fuzz. If she wa'n't peaches and cream, then all you need is
lettuce to make me a lobster salad.

And she was as nice to Van as if he was old Deuteronomy out of the
Bible. He set down to that meal with a face on him like a pair of
nutcrackers, and afore 'twas over he was laughing and eating apple pie
and telling funny yarns about robbing his "friends" in the Street. I
judged he'd be sorry for it afore morning, but I didn't care for that. I
was kind of worried myself; didn't understand it.

And I understood it less and less as the days went by. If she'd been
Maizie Bounderby, with two lines in each hand and one in her teeth, she
couldn't have done more to hook that old stock-broker. She cooked little
special dishes for his dyspepsy to play with, and set with him on the
piazza evenings, and laughed at his jokes, and the land knows what.
Inside of a fortni't he was a gone goose, which wa'n't surprising--every
other man being in the same fix--but 'TWAS surprising to see her helping
the goneness along. All hands was watching the game, of course, and it
pretty nigh started a mutiny at the Old Home. The Bounderbys packed
up and lit out in ten days, and none of the other women would speak
to Mabel. They didn't blame poor Mr. Van, you understand. 'Twas all
her--"low, designing thing!"

And Jonadab! he wa'n't fit to live with. The third forenoon after Van
Wedderburn got there he come around and took the quarter bet. And the
way he crowed over me made my hands itch for a rope's end. Finally I
owned up to myself that I'd made a mistake; the girl was a whitewashed
tombstone and the whitewash was rubbing thin. That night I dropped a
lin