The family thought that Ben Gartz was being heavily attentive. A man who paid court to a woman through her family was an attentive man. But after the first few weeks following Lottie's departure it was unmistakably plain that his attentions were concentrating on the Kemp branch of the family rather than on the Payson. The first box of candy sent to Charley, for example, came a week after Lottie's sailing. It was one of those large satin, brocade, lace-and-gold affairs. You have seen them in the two-dollar-a-pound shops and have wondered who might be so fatuous or so rich or so much in love as to buy them. Charley, coming from work on a cool autumn day, found a great square package on the dressing table in her bedroom. Her letters and packages and telephone calls always were placed there, ready for homecoming. "Any mail?" she said, to-day. Her quick eye had seen there was none. And yet she so wanted some--one letter in particular--that she asked, hopefully. Mail, to Charley, meant, those days, one of those thin envelopes with a strip pasted over one end to show where the censor had opened it. Then she had seen the box. It was an unavoidable box holding, as it did, five pounds of Wood's most intricate sweets. In these self-sacrificing days candy was one of the things you had learned to forego. Therefore, "Wood's!" exclaimed Charley, removing the wrappers. "Who do you suppose?--Oh, my goodness! It looks like a parlor davenport; or a dressy coffin. Why, it's from that Ben Gartz! Well! Lotta can't say I'm not keeping the home-fires burning." She gave the brocade box to Jeannette for her dresser and more than half its contents to her grandmother and Aunt Charlotte, both of whom ate sweets in appalling quantities, the flickering flame of their bodily furnaces doubtless calling for this quick form of fuel. She herself scarcely tasted it, thinking more of a clear skin than a pleased palate. She meant to write Ben a note of thanks. She even started one; addressed one of her great square stiff art-paper envelopes in her dashing hand. But something called her away and she never finished it. He called at the house a week later, after dinner--just dropped in as he was driving by--and mentioned it delicately. "Oh, Miss Charley, I sent you a little--I wondered if you got it----" Then she was honestly ashamed. "Oh, Mr. Gartz, what a pig you must think me! I started a note to you. Really----" She even ran back to her room and returned with the envelope and the sheet of paper on which she had written his name, and the date. He said he was going to keep the piece of paper, and tucked it into his left-hand vest pocket with a soulful look.