"That's queer! All right." Hedwig was waved away. "I wonder if anything is the matter? Of course there isn't--only--there haven't been three Mondays since I left here that John's letter didn't come on the early mail." She straightened a rose that was falling out of a jar and stood off to watch the effect. "Nobody but John would write every week, when I don't write once in four--don't even read his letters for days after they come, sometimes. But I like to know they're here. I believe"--she clasped her hands behind her head--"I believe I wish I had let him come down to-night. No, I don't. But why didn't he write? He ought to have known--" She turned away. "It would serve me right if he never wrote again." By seven o'clock she was on her way to the monthly meeting of the town council, which meeting was always held on the second Monday evening in the month, and as she started off she waved to Hedwig, standing in the door. "Telephone Miss Gibbie not to sit up for me," she called back. "I'm going to stay all night with her, but it may be late before I get there. Don't forget!" And again the hand was waved; and as she drove down the dusty road, Ephraim beside her, the uncertainty of the morning faded and her spirits rose at the prospect of the experience awaiting. "You see," she thought to herself, "I've had the advantage of being poor and not expecting things to go just as I want them, so it takes a great deal to discourage me. When you're dealing with human nature it's the unexpected you must expect. 'Human nature are a rascal,' Mrs. McDougal says, and Mrs. McDougal's observations come terribly near being true." She laughed and whistled softly, but at Ephraim's discreet cough stopped and turned toward him. "I oughtn't to do it, ought I, Ephraim? It isn't nice. I am afraid I forget sometimes I am really and truly grown up." "I reckon you does." Ephraim touched his hat. "You's right smart of a child yet in some things, 'count of yo' young heart, I reckon. I ain't never seen nobody who could see the sunny side like you kin, but it ain't all sunny, Miss Mary, this worl' ain't, and there's a lot of pesky people in it." He coughed again. "Sometimes folks seem to forgit you is your grandpa's grandchild. Yo' grandpa was the high-steppinist gentleman I ever seen in my life, but since you been goin' down among them mill folks and factory folks and takin' an intrus' in 'em, lookin' into how things is, some of them King Street people seem to think, scusin' of my sayin' it, that maybe it's yo' father's blood what's comin' out in you." Mary Cary laughed. "I hope it is. My father was a very sensible gentleman, and didn't ask others what he must or must not do. But his people in England would be more shocked than--" She stopped and her lips twisted in a queer little smile. "Put me down here, Ephraim. I am going first to Mrs. Corbin's."