eady. The poor thing is
soaked through. You go to the pantry and in the blue soup tureen, the
one we don't use, you'll find a bottle of that cherry rum Cap'n Hallet
gave me three years ago. Bring it right here and bring a tumbler and
spoon with it. After that you see if you can get Doctor Powers on the
telephone and ask him to come right down here as quick as he can. HURRY!
Primmie Cash, if you stop to ask one more question I--I don't know what
I'll do to you. Go ALONG!"

Miss Cash went along, noisily along. Her mistress bent over the wet,
pitiful little figure upon the sofa.

And thus, working by devious ways, did Fate bring about the meeting of
Galusha Cabot Bangs, of the National Institute, Washington, D. C., and
Miss Martha Phipps, of East Wellmouth, which, it may be said in passing,
was something of an achievement, even for Fate.

CHAPTER II

And in order to make clear the truth of the statement just made, namely,
that Fate had achieved something when it brought Galusha Bangs to the
door of Martha Phipps' home that rainy night in October--in order to
emphasize the truth of that statement it may be well, without waiting
further, to explain just who Galusha Cabot Bangs was, and who and what
his family was, and how, although the Bangses were all very well in
their way, the Cabots--his mother's family--were "the banking Cabots of
Boston," and were, therefore, very great people indeed.

"The banking Cabots" must not be confused with any other branch of the
Cabots, of which there are many in Boston. All Boston Cabots are "nice
people," many are distinguished in some way or other, and all are
distinctly worth while. But "the banking Cabots" have been deep in
finance from the very beginning, from the earliest of colonial times.
The salary of the Reverend Cotton Mather was paid to him by a Cabot, and
another Cabot banked whatever portion of it he saved for a rainy day.
In the Revolution a certain Galusha Cabot, progenitor of the line of
Galusha Cabots, assisted the struggling patriots of Beacon Hill to pay
their troops in the Continental army. During the Civil War his grandson,
the Honorable Galusha Hancock Cabot, one of Boston's most famous bankers
and financiers, was of great assistance to his state and nation in the
sale of bonds and the floating of loans. His youngest daughter, Dorothy
Hancock Cabot, married--well, she should, of course, have married a
financier or a banker or, at the very least, a millionair