Jean silently reviewed young Mr. Fargo's points; athlete second to none in the gymnasium of the local Y.M.C.A.; gifted with a tenor voice particularly effective at church festivals in ballads of tee-total sentiment; heir presumptive to a mineral spring, a retail coal business, and a seat in the directorate of the First National Bank; clearly destined, in fine, to bloom one of the solid men of his community. Joined to these virtues, present and prospective, he seemed sincerely, if not ardently, fond of Amelia, and Jean with her whole heart wished her sister's long-drawn-out wooing godspeed. Perhaps she couched this less happily than she might. At all events, Mrs. Fanshaw took warm-offence at some allusion to the suitor's leisured siege. "Under the circumstances," she remarked severely, "it's a wonder his attentions have continued at all. No eligible young man in Shawnee Springs can be expected to want a sister-in-law whose name everybody mentions in the same breath with Stella Wilkes's, and you know the Fargo family is as proud as Lucifer. I don't see that they have any call to set themselves up as they do--the Tuttles were landowners in the county twenty years before a Fargo was heard of; but there is certainly some excuse for their standing off about Amelia. You don't seem to appreciate how painful her situation has been. People were only just pitching on something else to talk about after you went, when you stirred the scandal up again by running away. That nearly spoiled everything. I had it on the best of authority--Mrs. Fargo's dressmaker is mine now--that Harry and his father actually came to words. Then, to cap the climax, we'd no sooner settled down in peace than the vulgar riot happened. Nobody knew positively whether you were implicated, but they naturally judged you were, and of course I couldn't conscientiously deny it when they asked me point-blank. It has been terrible--terrible." Jean was swept away upon the flood of egotism. She forgot that she too had a point of view. Their wrongs were the great wrongs. "I'm sorry," she said humbly. "It's true I didn't realize. I don't want to stand in Amelia's way. You won't have reason to complain again while I am here." "I don't expect I shall. I can't conceive of another thing you could be up to, even if your disposition to consider _our_ feelings a little should change. If they'll only marry before your term expires!" Jean's lips tightened. "There's almost a year and a half yet," she said grimly. "Surely that's time enough." "It would be for anybody but a Fargo," sighed her mother. "They're slow at everything. We can only hope and wait. It's been very hard." "I'll try not to make it more so afterward," Jean returned. "I suppose I must go back to the Springs at first. When a girl goes out they take her--home. But I'll not stay. I'll go away at once."