* * * * * The next afternoon, when Haydock dropped into Wolcott’s room to see how the sore throat was getting along, he found Wolcott’s mother and sister had driven out from Boston on the same errand. Haydock’s call was opportune, for Wolcott, in a few minutes, had another visitor,--a somewhat agitated, incoherent young man who wished very much to speak to Wolcott alone. The Magnificent One would have granted the interview outside in the hall had not Mrs. Wolcott protested on account of draughts, so he took his guest into his bed-room, and shut the door. “How very mysterious!” said Miss Wolcott. Her mother examined the closed door through her glasses. “Who is he?” “That’s McGaw!” said Haydock, significantly. “One of Sears’s friends?” asked Mrs. Wolcott. Haydock laughed. “I never knew that he was,” he answered. Miss Wolcott seemed much interested; but her interest not nearly as eager as Haydock’s. McGaw’s visit baffled him. He couldn’t believe that the fellow had come, in a fit of remorse, to apologise to Wolcott for having kept him out of the Signet,--the idea was fantastic--ridiculous. Nor could he think it probable that McGaw had found out what Wolcott had been doing for him; no one but Barrows and Ellis and Miss Wolcott and Haydock himself knew. The long interview in Wolcott’s bed-room was indeed mysterious. It was something of a strain to Haydock to keep his attention from wandering to the rise and fall of voices on the other side of the door long enough to talk intelligently to Mrs. Wolcott; and when, after examining everything in the room, she said that, since she was in Cambridge, she thought she would improve the opportunity of making a call somewhere on Brattle Street, Haydock inwardly applauded the intention. “He’s not nearly as ill as his note led us to believe,” said Mrs. Wolcott. “He wrote that he was ‘wasted away to a shadow,’ and that if we had a desire--from idle curiosity or any other motive--to see him alive, which he doubted, we’d better come out at once.” “I was reassured,” added Miss Wolcott, “when I got a note by the next post, saying, ‘Dear Josephine, If you wear that dowdy old felt hat, with the black satin bow and the brass buckle, out to Cambridge, please sit downstairs in the vestibule, while I talk to mamma.’ Sears really ill is quite lamblike.” “So you see, you mustn’t think me an unnatural parent for running away to leave a card on old Mrs. Burlap,” said Wolcott’s mother. Haydock saw her to the carriage, and went back to tell Miss Wolcott about the Signet meeting, and interest her still more in her brother’s visitor. He softened the language of McGaw’s speech a little, although he made its general import clear. His frequent talks with Miss Wolcott about Sears enabled him to. “I agree with Mr. Ellis,” she said, when Haydock had finished. “I want McGaw to know. It does seem unjust to poor Searsy.”