"Then I went down to her store, an' got a word with her, though she was rattlin' busy. Queer, though, how sharp-eyed some of those New Yorkers are. Mary hadn't had a bit of trouble. The firm wasn't surprised when she began to make her little statement--they said they'd seen, a month or two before, how matters were likely to go, so they'd selected her successor, sorry though they were at the idea of losing her. They hadn't supposed the notice to quit would be so sudden, but after they compared notes about the front page of a mornin' paper they agreed that they'd be likely to lose Mary as soon as I struck New York. I s'posed men as busy as the owners of such a business would have forgotten the name of Claybanks, if they'd ever heard it, an' I wouldn't have supposed that they'd ever have heard anythin' about me; but bless you, they knew it all, an' they took Mary's words out of her mouth, as soon as she explained that a dear friend who had just arrived from Europe needed her companionship and assistance in a trip to the West. 'We hope Mr. Wright isn't ill,' said one of the partners, an' the other said, 'We greatly hope so, for we learn from the Commercial Agency that he is really as prominent and useful a man as there is in his county.' Think o' that,--not that the Agency, whatever it is, was right, but think of me bein' on record in any way in New York, an' of those old chaps havin' known all about Mary an' me! It's plain enough that New York folks are as keen-eyed as the best, an' that they've got one thing that we Westerners don't know a single thing about, an' that's system.