If she or the pale lady had ten thousand dollars, how much they could do with it! Why, perhaps the pale lady could buy back the beautiful old home she had more than once told Carolyn about--the rambling old Colonial house with the pillars in front and the lawn slanting down to the Hudson River. And she could go to Country Clubs, and have parties, and ride in automobiles, just as she had before she had married Baby Laird's father. Sometimes Carolyn May had wondered if her friend was not just a little sorry that she had ever married at all. She had been so poor, and had seen so much trouble since that time. And she was still so beautiful, with her shining hair and delicate complexion, that it seemed almost wicked (Carolyn had heard her mother say this) that the pale lady could not wear clothes befitting her beauty. Here they were--the "Lairds," as Carolyn May always thought of them--living again almost from hand to mouth; for what the man could do for Barzilla barely paid for their food and lodging. In the evening he often sat alone on the stone bench outside the cottage smoking, and did not even speak to the pale lady, nor to anybody else. Indeed, he must have done something very, very wrong, Carolyn thought sadly, for everybody to so look at him askance. She was tempted--her tender little heart was fairly wrenched by the sight of his silent woe--to climb up beside him and try to give him comfort. But somehow, from the very first, Carolyn of the Sunny Heart had found Joe Bassett difficult. He was one who shrank from revealing his heart even to a child. She understood that it was money matters that troubled him. If they only had that ten thousand dollars those two men had talked about! If the pale lady had so much money, the little girl was sure, she would buy nothing less than a gold carriage for Baby Laird and a beautiful fur robe to put in it for the winter. And then the baby's father could do what Barzilla wanted him to do, whatever that was, and they would all be happy again. "Wouldn't you?" she asked the pale lady one day, as she sat beside her and the baby was asleep. Carolyn had been thinking so hard about the ten thousand dollars and about her friend's trouble, that she came out plump with this query without realizing that she spoke aloud. "Wouldn't I what, Carolyn May?" asked the pale lady from the hammock. "Be happy again if you had all that money?" said the child. "I do not know what you are talking about, my dear," the pale lady confessed. "Oh, of course you don't!" exclaimed Carolyn, laughing. "What am I thinking of? _You_ don't know about that ten thousand dollars, do you?" "What ten thousand dollars, child?" "That my friend from the Orowoc House lost." "Your friend--Did he tell you he lost such a sum?" the pale lady asked with surprise. "Oh, no! Maybe he doesn't know about it. But I do."