She was very sleepy when they came out upon the busy street. The big stores were closed and the theatre-going crowd jostled her. Even the suggestion of her favourite moving picture house did not tempt her on this night, and she fairly staggered the last few blocks, clinging to her mother's hand; "and I never _did_ know just how I got to bed," she told her father the next day. It had been quite a wonderful day to look back upon, despite her disappointment about the pale lady and Mr. Joe Bassett. Regarding that, Mr. Cameron had something to tell his wife when he sat down to the breakfast table. It was Carolyn's and her mother's breakfast, but Mr. Cameron's supper. "Of course, Carolyn May knew her way home from the park," her mother said. "But Mr. Bassett seemed to take the fact too easily for granted when he deserted her there. Or shall we lay it to the eagerness of the unfledged reporter?" She had already heard the story of Joe Bassett and knew who he was and as much about his personal affairs as her husband. Just why Mr. Henry Bassett, disrespectfully known far and wide as "the Griffin of Wall Street," had disowned his son, the newspaper reading public and the newspaper writers who catered to that public could only surmise. One day Joe was high in favour in his father's office downtown, as well as in the Riverside Drive mansion where the Bassetts dwelt; the next, Joe was out in the world and frankly admitting to friends who asked that he never expected to touch a cent of his father's vast fortune or be received by him again. Of course one could surmise that the estrangement had something to do with the younger Bassett's marriage, although that had occurred after his break with his father. It was not the usual tawdry rich-man's-son-and-stage-girl marriage. Young Mrs. Bassett was born and brought up "to the purple" just as Joe had been. But her family had lost its property and rumour kept whispering that the girl had nowhere to turn but to that "easiest way" of marriage. It might be said that she had captured a rich man's son. But she had wedded Joe Bassett after he had been disowned; and those knowing Henry Bassett well said that he would not have put his son out of the house without a good reason, and because of that good reason he would never take him back. This was all two years old now. The general public had quite forgotten the young Bassetts. "Or shall we lay it to the eagerness of the unfledged reporter?" Mrs. Cameron had asked. "Scarcely that," observed her husband in a somewhat scornful tone of voice. "Joe Bassett--no matter how smart a man his father is--will never set the North River afire. At least, not in the newspaper field." "Tell me about it," said Hannah Cameron, for she was one of those wise women who always retain a refreshing though not an undue interest in their husband's work. Besides, before she married she had worked in the _Beacon_ office and had never lost interest in the newspaper "game."