other and I think about what you've done for
. . ."

Neale dodged hastily. "That's all right. That's all right. If you like
it, that's all that's necessary. And I'm not Captain any more."

"I forget, sir," said the other apologetically.

"Can you sit down and take a second batch right now? I want to get
through early. Mrs. Crittenden's going to bring some visitors to see the
place this afternoon, and I'll have to be with them more or less."

He looked at the clock. It was half-past three. Marise had said she
would be there about four. He gave a calculating glance at the stack of
letters. He would never be able to get through those. "We'll have to get
a move on," he remarked. "Things got pretty well piled up while I was
away."

He began to dictate rapidly, steadily, the end of a sentence clearly in
his mind before he pronounced the first word. He liked to dictate and
enjoyed doing it well. The pale young stenographer bent over his
note-book, his disfigured face intent and serious.

"Turned out all right, Arthur has," thought Neale to himself. "I wasn't
so far off, when I thought of the business college for him." Then he
applied himself single-mindedly to his dictation, taking up one letter
after another, with hardly a pause in his voice. But for all his
diligence, he had not come to the bottom of the pile when four o'clock
struck; nor ten minutes later when, glancing out of the window, he saw
Marise and the children with Mr. Bayweather and the two other men coming
across the mill-yard. Evidently Mr. Bayweather had dropped in just as
they were going to start and had come along. He stopped dictating and
looked at the group with a certain interest. Marise and the children had
had a good deal to say yesterday about the newcomers to Crittenden's.

It seemed to him that the impression he had received of them had been as
inaccurate as such second-hand impressions were apt to be. The older man
was just like any elderly business man, for all he could see, nothing so
especially attractive about him, although Marise had said in her ardent
way that he was "the sort of old American you love on sight, the kind
that makes you home-sick when you meet him in Europe." And as for Mr.
Marsh, he couldn't see any signs of his being such a record-breaking
live-wire as they had all said. He walked along quietly enough, and was
evidently as resigned as any of them to letting Mr. Bayweather do all
the talking. On the other hand, none of th