"But I will keep my mind on it," she added. "Who knows? Perhaps some wise thought may fly my way. And all that money! It will really make a fine investment." "Remember, you girls will expect your 'dots' out of the estate some day," chuckled Mr. Howbridge. "Your own dowry will come first, I presume, Ruth." "Me? Get married? With the children so dependent upon me?" gasped the eldest Corner House girl. But she blushed warmly and averted her eyes from the shrewd gaze of the lawyer. "Now you are talking nonsense, Mr. Howbridge." He let her go without comment. But to himself he murmured: "I never knew it to fail. These girls who are determined to be spinsters are always the first to be caught in the coil of matrimony." If Ruth's thoughts lingered upon such a ridiculous suggestion (ridiculous from her standpoint) after she left the lawyer's house, her expression of countenance did not show it. She walked cheerfully along the shaded street toward Milton's railroad station, for the old Corner House stood upon the corner of Willow and Main Streets, opposite the Parade Ground, quite on the other side of town. She crossed the canal and was almost in sight of the station when she saw a tall figure ahead of her whose singular gait and old-fashioned manner of dress would have caused comment anywhere. To wear a "stove-pipe" hat on a hot day like this, with a heavy, dark frock-coat and gray trousers, with his feet encased in overshoes, seemed to the casual observer rather ridiculous. "Why," thought Ruth, "he looks as Seneca Sprague might if he were dressed up and going to his own wedding," and she laughed to think of that ridiculous possibility regarding one of the well-known characters of Milton. This old gentleman was a stranger to her, Ruth was sure. Milton being a junction point of two railroads, there were often strangers about the railroad station waiting for connections on one or the other of the roads. This man must be, the girl thought, such a marooned passenger. As he reached the edge of the shade cast by the trees on Pleasant Street and stepped into the glare of the open square about the railway station, he unfurled a huge umbrella and raised it to shield himself from the sun's glare. It was a most astonishing umbrella. The upper side was a faded green; the under side an age-yellowed white. "Why," thought Ruth, "it must be an heirloom in his family." Amused, she continued directly behind the old gentleman as he started to cross the four tracks which blotted the center of Milton. Accidents had happened more than once at this grade crossing, and the town councilmen had been in hot water with the taxpayers for some years regarding the changing of the railroad's level.