Fanny was busy putting the finishing touches to the supper table. “Mother’s going to stop for tea at Mrs. Daggett’s, and go to prayer meeting afterward,” she said. “We may as well eat.” The two sat down, facing each other. “What did you mean, Jim?” asked Fanny, as she passed the bread plate to her brother. “You said, ‘It looks like honest money; but—’” “I guess I’m a fool,” he grumbled; “but there’s something about the whole business I don’t like.... Have some of this apple sauce, Fan?” The girl passed her plate for a spoonful of the thick compound, and in return shoved the home-dried beef toward her brother. “I don’t see anything queer about it,” she replied dully. “I suppose a person with money might come to Brookville and want to buy a house. The old Bolton place used to be beautiful, mother says. I suppose it can be again. And if she chooses to spend her money that way—” “That’s just the point I can’t see: why on earth should she want to saddle herself with a proposition like that?” Fanny’s mute lips trembled. She was thinking she knew very well why Lydia Orr had chosen to come to Brookville: in some way unknown to Fanny, Miss Orr had chanced to meet the incomparable Wesley Elliot, and had straightway set her affections upon him. Fanny had been thinking it over, ever since the night of the social at Mrs. Solomon Black’s. Up to the moment when Wesley—she couldn’t help calling him Wesley still—had left her, on pretense of fetching a chair, she had instantly divined that it was a pretense, and of course he had not returned. Her cheeks tingled hotly as she recalled the way in which Joyce Fulsom had remarked the plate of melting ice cream on the top shelf of Mrs. Black’s what-not: “I guess Mr. Elliot forgot his cream,” the girl had said, with a spark of malice. “I saw him out in the yard awhile ago talking to that Miss Orr.” Fanny had humiliated herself still further by pretending she didn’t know it was the minister who had left his ice cream to dissolve in a pink and brown puddle of sweetness. Whereat Joyce Fulsom had giggled disagreeably. “Better keep your eye on him, Fan,” she had advised. Of course she couldn’t speak of this to Jim; but it was all plain enough to her. “I’m going down to the village for awhile, Fan,” her brother said, as he arose from the table. But he did not, as was his custom, invite her to accompany him.