n her soft, brown hair. "I saw it, after--after the ceremony.
You--you were going to kiss me, and I caught the odor of liquor, and I
felt that you wouldn't have done that if you had been yourself; it
frightened me, a little. But you talked perfectly straight, and I never
knew you weren't the man--Frank Cameron--until you came here. Then I saw
you couldn't be he. Chester had known you when Frank was at home with
his mother--I compared dates and was sure of that--and he called you
Ford Campbell. So then I saw what a horrible blunder I'd made, and I was
worried nearly to death! But I couldn't see what I could do about it,
and you didn't--"

"Say, what about this Frank Cameron, anyway?" Ford demanded, with true
male jealousy. "What did you want to marry him for? You couldn't have
known him, or--"

"Oh, you wouldn't understand--" Josephine gave a little, impatient turn
of the head, "unless you knew his mother. I did know Frank, a long time
ago, when I was twelve or thirteen, and when I saw you, I thought he'd
changed a lot. But it was his mother; she was the dearest thing,
but--queer. Sort of childish, you know. And she just worshiped Frank,
and used to watch for the postman--oh, it was too pitiful! Sometimes I'd
write a letter myself, and pretend it was from him, and read it to her;
her eyes were bad, so it was easy--"

"Where was this Frank?" Ford interrupted.

"Oh, I don't know! I never did know. Somewhere out West, we thought. I
used to make believe the letters came from Helena, or Butte, because
that was where she heard from him last. He was always promising to come
home--in the letters. That used to make her so much better," she
explained naively. "And sometimes she'd be able to go out in the yard
and fuss with her flowers, after one like that. But he never came, and
so she got the notion that he was wild and a spendthrift. I suppose he
was, or he'd have written, or something. She had lots and lots of money
and property, you know.

"Well," Josephine took one of Ford's hand and patted it reassuringly,
"she got the notion that I must marry Frank, when he came home. I tried
to reason her out of that, and it only made her worse. It grew on her,
and I got so I couldn't bear to write any more letters, and that made it
worse still. She made a will that I must marry Frank within a year after
she died, or he wouldn't get anything but a hundred dollars--and she was
worth thousands and thousands." Josephine snuggled closer.