A thousand times, in those years of their dwelling together, Mrs. Thrift's eyes had seemed to say to Charlotte, "You see! This is what a husband should be. This is a son-in-law. No Dick disgracing us here." The blow stunned the two old people almost beyond realising its enormity. The loss was, altogether, about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Isaac Thrift set about repaying it. Real estate on Indiana, Wabash, Michigan, Prairie was sold and the money distributed to make good the default. They kept the house on Prairie; clung to it. Anything but that. After it was all over Isaac Thrift was an old man with palsied hands. Hair and beard whose color had defied the years were suddenly white. Hetty Thrift's tongue lost its venomous bite. After Isaac Thrift's death she turned to Charlotte. Charlotte alone could quell her querulousness. Carrie acted as an irritant, naturally. They were so much alike. It was Charlotte who made broths and jellies, milk-toast and gruel with which to tempt the mother's appetite. Carrie, the mathematical, was a notoriously poor cook. Her mind was orderly and painstaking enough when it came to figuring on a piece of property, or a depreciated bond. But it lacked that peculiar patience necessary to the watching of a boiling pot or a simmering pan. "Oh, it's done by now," she would cry, and dump a pan's contents into a dish. Oftener than not it was half-cooked or burned. Charlotte announced, rather timidly, that she would give music lessons; sewing lessons; do fine embroidery. But her tinkling tunes were ghostly echoes of a bygone day. People were even beginning to say that perhaps, after all, this madman Wagner could be played so that one might endure listening. Hand embroidery was little appreciated at a time when imitations were the craze. Carrie it was who became head of that manless household. It was well she had wasted her time in doing sums instead of being more elegantly occupied while at Miss Tait's Finishing School, in the old Wabash Avenue days. She now juggled interest, simple and compound, with ease; took charge of the few remaining bits of scattered property saved from the ruins; talked glibly of lots, quarter-sections, sub-divisions. All through their childhood Belle and Lottie heard reiterated: "Run away. Can't you see mother's busy! Ask Aunt Charlotte." So then, it was Aunt Charlotte who gave them their bread-and-butter with sugar on top. Gradually the whole household revolved about Carrie, though it was Charlotte who kept it in motion. When Carrie went to bed the household went to bed. She must have her rest. Meals were timed to suit Carrie's needs. She became a business woman in a day when business women were practically unheard of. She actually opened an office in one of the new big Clark Street office buildings, near Washington, and had a sign printed on the door: MRS. CARRIE PAYSON REAL ESTATE