When Philip Holt had grown to manhood his foster parents lost most of their money. A little later they died, leaving their foster son nothing. The young man had been used to luxury and rich friends, and he could not give them up, therefore he told his wealthy friends that because he had once been a poor boy he meant to devote his life to charity. He proposed to work among the New York poor and asked their cooperation. Large sums of money were given him to be used for charity, but Philip Holt believed too strongly in the theory that charity begins at home. Whenever it was possible he used a part of this money for himself. To make more, he began speculating in Wall Street. He lost two thousand, then five thousand dollars of the money that had been entrusted to him. For almost a year he had been the treasurer of a New York charitable organization, and the time was near at hand when he must give a report of the money that he had misused. He knew that disgrace, imprisonment, stared him in the face unless he could persuade Mrs. Curtis to advance him five thousand dollars for some charitable purpose, or give it to him for himself. He, therefore, did not intend to be balked in his plan by either Madge or Tania, no matter what desperate measures he had to employ. So there were two persons at Cape May who came to believe that they stood in dire need of money. Yet they wished it for very different reasons: Philip Holt wanted money to save himself from disgrace; Madge desired it to help her uncle and aunt save their old home, "Forest House," to send Eleanor back to graduate at Miss Tolliver's in the fall, to start on her search for her father, and, last of all, to take care of Tania. For Madge had managed the little waif's affairs most undiplomatically. When she discovered the threat that Philip held over Tania if she told his secret, the little captain went to Mrs. Curtis with the story. She did not wish her friend to be deceived by the young man, so she confided to Mrs. Curtis that Philip Holt, who was supposedly the son of some old friends, was really the child of old Sal of the tenements. Mrs. Curtis thought that Madge must be mistaken. She wrote to old Sal to ask her if it were true. The Irish woman was devoted to her son. She would have done anything in the world not to disgrace him. She answered Mrs. Curtis's letter by declaring that Philip Holt was no relative of hers, but a young man whom she knew because of his kindness to the poor. Mrs. Curtis was indignant. She insisted that Tania had told Madge a falsehood, and that Philip Holt was right in his opinion of Tania. It would not be well to send the child to a school; she should be put in some kind of an institution. This, however, Madge was determined should never happen. She had no money of her own, nor did she know where she was to obtain the means, but she made up her mind to find some way to provide for her quaint little Fairy Godmother.