Grace hurried from the kitchen, embraced a lady whom she saw, and exclaimed:-- "Mary Truett!" "Mrs. Wright, if you please," replied the lady. "I beg a thousand pardons!" Grace gasped. She soon recovered herself and looked very roguish as she continued, "Won't you kindly introduce me to the distinguished-looking stranger beside you?" Then Caleb pushed his hat to the back of his head, slapped his leg noisily, and exclaimed:-- "Distinguished--looking--stranger! Hooray!" XXIV--HOW IT CAME ABOUT "NOW, Caleb," said Philip, after the four had been seated at the breakfast table so long that most of the food had disappeared, "tell us all about it. Don't leave out anything." "All right," said Caleb, after emptying his coffee-cup. "I'll begin at the beginning. I don't s'pose 'tis necessary to tell any of you that New York is a mighty big city, an' London is another, so--" "New York savors of business, and so does London," said Philip, "and as this is Sunday, I must decline to hear a word about worldly things. I'm amazed that so orthodox a man as you should think of such matters on Sunday." "Tell him, Caleb," Grace added, "and tell me also, about something heavenly--something angelic, at least--something resembling a special mercy, or a means of grace." As she spoke, she looked so significantly at Mary, that Caleb could no longer pretend to misunderstand. "Well," said he, "as I came back double when you expected only to see me single, I s'pose a word or two of explanation would only be fair to all concerned. You see, before I started for London I felt pretty well acquainted with Mary, for I'd been in New York two or three weeks. That mightn't seem a long time, to some, in which to form an acquaintance that will last through life an' eternity, but such things depend a lot on the person who's doin' 'em, an', as you know, my principal business for years has been to study human nature in general, an' particularly whatever specimen of it is nearest at hand. In New York it had come to be as natural as breathin', an' mighty interestin' too, especially when the person's p'ints were first-rate, an' I had reason to believe that I was bein' studied at the same time by somebody who had a knack at the business an' didn't have any reason to mean harm to me." "Any one--any New Yorker, at least,--would have found Caleb an interesting subject,--don't you think so?" said Mary, with a shy look of inquiry. "I'm very sure that Philip and I did," Grace replied. "Well, 'twas all of Mrs. Somerton's doin', for she gave me a letter of introduction to Miss Mary Truett: the Lord reward her accordin' to her works, as the Apostle Paul said about Alexander the Coppersmith. I carried a lot of other letters, you'll remember, and every one to whom they were given was quite polite an' obligin'; but business is business, so as soon as the business was done, they were done with me. But Mary wasn't." "She wasn't allowed to be," Mary whispered.