something for which to be profoundly thankful.
Thurlow dressed with haste but as carefully as his wardrobe permitted and hurried downstairs.
“Don’t wait dinner for me, Mother,” he said to the anxious mother who was concocting an appetizing dinner at the least expense possible.
“Oh, Thurlow,” she said, dismayed. “You’ll get sick before this is over. I just know you will. Can’t you wait till I get dinner on the table? It won’t be half an hour.”
“I can’t wait five minutes, little Mother,” he said, stooping to kiss her tenderly. “I’ve got a lead, and I’ve got to follow it while the trail is hot. It may lead to nothing, but it’s my last chance as far as I can see. I’ll get back as soon as I can, but I can’t stop now. It’s now or never!”
“Then you must drink a glass of milk,” pleaded the mother.
He poured the milk down in one breath, accepted a couple of sugar cookies from the plate she handed out, and was gone.
“Oh dear!” sighed his mother. “To think he has to be hurrying around wildly this way for nothing. Just nothing! What would his father say, after all his careful planning for you both! It’s heartbreaking!”
“He thinks he has something,” said the sister listlessly, “but he might as well give up and try to hunt a job.”
“I’m afraid it will be just the same when he comes to hunting a job,” said the mother, and the slow tears stole quietly down her cheeks.
“Now, Mother, don’t you give up, too,” said the girl with stormy eyes and set lips, rising and going to look out of the window to hide the sudden tears that blurred her own eyes.
There was unhappy silence in the room for several seconds, and then the mother answered in a tone of forced cheerfulness, “No, of course not. I had no thought of giving up. We’re going to come through all right. I have no doubt that Thurlow will succeed in something soon, and we shall find everything settling into sane living again. We’ve got to keep brave and cheerful.”
“Of course!” said Rilla peppily, but she stood a long time staring out into the evening twilight, her lips set in that firm determination that showed she was thinking something through to a finish. Her mother watched her furtively and thought how much she looked like her father, and presently she got up and went to the old desk where a lot of important papers were kept. There were things there that she had meant to look over when she could bring herself to doing it, not very important things, but still she had to do it sometime, and this was as good a time as any, since they would, of course, delay dinner for a while, hoping Thurlow would return to share it with them. She had shrank long from going over these papers. They reminded her so of the husband and father who was gone that she could hardly bear to handle them, but perhaps it was as well to get through with it. A lot of them must be destroyed. The house, of course, was not going to be theirs any longer, no matter what happened, and she ought to get her things in order.
So she sat down at the desk, and Rilla continued to stare into the lengthening shadows out on the grass, thinking out her seventeen-year-old problems.
Meantime Thurlow was having troubles of his own. Arrived at the House of Steele, he had asked to see Mrs. Steele and was told that she was very busy just now. Could he send up a message, or would he come again in the morning?
Thurlow’s heart was beating like the proverbial trip-hammer, and he stood there baffled for an instant. Should he risk a message or wait until morning? He decided on the message. He took out one of his fraternity college cards and wrote beneath his name:
I have been told you can tell me whom to see about a house that the Women’s Club would like to purchase.
He looked at it after he had written it, and the words seemed to be dancing around his name, hand in hand. How tired he felt and hungry, too. He almost wished he had not come tonight.
The maid took the card, looked at him uncertainly, and finally asked him in and gave him a chair in the reception hall. He saw her vanishing up the stairs studying the card, and his heart sank. How blundering he had been to blurt out his business in that abrupt way. Now likely the woman would send him word she knew nothing about it. Perhaps after all she wasn’t the right Mrs. Steele. Perhaps George had been her son’s name or her brother’s. What a fool he had been not to approach her on the train, tell her frankly that he had overheard her. Now perhaps he would never get on the track of this chance again.
But then he heard the soft stir of silken skirts, and suddenly he saw the lady herself approaching. There was eagerness in her face and keen questioning.
“Are you from the Lockwoods’ house? Are you the agent?” she asked as she came toward him, his card in her hand.
Thurlow rose deferentially.
“No, but I heard that the club was looking at the Lockwood house, and knowing it was not in the market, I came to see if you would be interested in the house next door. I represent that.”
“Next door?” asked the lady eagerly. “Which side?”
She studied Thurlow’s face with kindling eyes as he explained about the house. He could see it interested her.
“And what is your price?” she asked.
The boy’s lips turned white as he opened them to answer; there was so much at stake.
“The price is low,” he said eagerly, “but it has to be cash. And it has to be within the next three days or I can’t sell it to you at all.”
The woman eyed him interestedly.
“Sit down,” she said. “Tell me about it. Wait! I’ll call my husband.”
He heard the man upstairs asserting that he hadn’t time to stop and listen to a fool thing about the club, but he heard the low, insistent plea of the woman, and then the two came down, the man growling, “All right. Just for a minute, but you’ll have to make it snappy!”
During the seconds while they were walking down the stairs, Thurlow did some rapid planning. He would have to be as brief as possible or the man would be gone, and the woman would perhaps not decide in his absence.
He arose with his story on his lips. He lifted honest eyes to the keen businessman, who searched him with cold eyes, but he spoke with the courage of desperation.
“My father died two months ago. Our house had a mortgage, which would have been all right, only the building association that held the mortgage failed, and it got into the hands of a couple of crooks. Then we lost every cent we had in the Franklin Bank crash, and now the crooks are demanding the full amount of the personal bond, which is double the mortgage. We can’t pay any of it, and we’ve got to sell the house. We have three days left before they take it away from us. If we can sell the house for cash, we can let it go at” Thurlow named the lowest sum that would clear the bond and pay the expenses of the transfer. He felt this was the last chance, and he couldn’t hope to get enough for any left over for themselves. But it had to be done. He swallowed hard and went on.
“After that it goes into the hands of the crooks, and they’ll want plenty if they sell it at all, though I think they mean to build a large apartment house there and make a lot of money out of it. If they take the house that way, they’ll have a stranglehold on me for the rest of my life till that bond is
