“Of course, the flat is here, and the furniture. If you do not care to come on to attend to the matter yourself, I will do the best I can to dispose of either or both. Mr. Cameron had paid a year’s rent in advance—rather an unwise thing, I thought—and the term has still ten months to run. He did it so that his wife, on her return from abroad, might have no worry on her mind. Perhaps the flat might be sublet, furnished, to advantage. You might state your pleasure regarding this. “You will see, by the copy of your brother-in-law’s will that I enclose, that you have been left in full and sole possession and guardianship of his property and affairs, including Carolyn May.” * * * * * And if somebody had shipped him a crocodile from the Nile, Joseph Stagg would have felt little more at a loss as to what disposal to make of the creature than he felt now regarding his little niece. “Well—she’ll be a nuisance; an awful nuisance,” was his final comment, with a mountainous sigh. Thus far, Aunty Rose Kennedy’s attitude towards the little stranger had been the single pleasant disappointment Mr. Stagg had experienced. Aunty Rose was an autocrat. Joseph Stagg had never been so comfortable in his life as since Mrs. Kennedy had taken up the management of his home. But he stood in great awe of her. He put the lawyer’s letter in the safe. For once he was unable to respond to a written communication promptly. Although he wore that band of crêpe on his arm, he could not actually realise the fact that his sister Hannah was dead. Any time these fifteen years he might have run down to New York to see her. First, she had worked in the newspaper office as a stenographer. Then she had married John Lewis Cameron, and they had gone immediately to housekeeping. Cameron was a busy man; he held a “desk job” on the paper. Vacations had been hard to get. And, before long, Hannah had written about her baby—“Hannah’s Car’lyn.” After the little one’s arrival there seemed less chance than before for the city family to get up to Sunrise Cove. But at any time he might have gone to them. If Joseph Stagg had shut up his store for a week and gone to New York, it would not have brought the world to an end. Nor was it because he was stingy that he had not done this. No, he was no miser. But he was fairly buried in his business. And there was no “look up” in that dim little office in the back of the hardware store. His nose was in the big ledger all the time, and there was no better or brighter outlook for him. Business. No other interest, social or spiritual, had Joseph Stagg. To his mind, time was wasted, used in any but the three very necessary ways—eating, sleeping, and attending to one’s business.