After supper that night, Wint went out into the kitchen where Hetty was washing dishes. He went on the pretext of getting a drink of water. There had been a time, a few months ago, when Hetty would have turned to greet him laughingly, and she would have drawn a glass of water and given it to him. But she did neither of those things now. Instead, she moved aside without looking at him, while he held the glass under the faucet; and when he stepped back to drink, she went on with her work, shoulders bent, eyes down. Wint finished the glass of water, and put the glass back in its place. Then he hesitated, started to go, came back. At last he asked pleasantly: “Well, Hetty, how are things going?” She looked at him sideways, with a swift, furtive glance. And she laughed in the mirthless way that was becoming habitual. “Oh, great,” she said, and her tone was ironical. “What’s the matter?” Wint asked. “Anything wrong?” “Of course not. Don’t be a kid. Can’t I have a grouch if I want to?” “Sure,” he agreed amiably. “I have ’em, myself. Anything I can do to bring you out of your grouch?” “No.” “If there is,” he said, so seriously she knew he meant his offer. “If there is, let me know. Maybe I can help.” “I’m not asking help,” she told him sullenly. “Is there anything definite? Anything wrong?” She said, with a hot flash of her dark eyes in his direction: “I told you no, didn’t I? What do you have to butt in for?” Wint considered that, and he filled his pipe and lighted it; and at last he turned to the door. From the doorway he called to her: “If anything turns up, Hetty, count on me.” She nodded, without speaking; and he left her. He was more troubled than he would have cared to admit; and he was convinced, in spite of what Hetty had said, that there was something wrong. The third or fourth day after, Hardiston meanwhile moving along the even tenor of its way, Wint decided, after supper at home, that he wanted to see Amos. He telephoned the Congressman’s home, and Agnes answered. He asked if Amos was at home. “He went uptown for the mail,” Agnes told him. “But he said he’d be right back. He’ll be here in a few minutes.” “Tell him I’m coming down, will you?” Wint suggested, and Agnes promised to do so. Wint took his hat and started for Amos’s home. He thought of going through town on the chance of picking Amos up at the Post Office; but the mail had been in for an hour, and he decided Amos would have reached his home before he got there, so he went on. Wint and Amos lived on the same street, but at different ends of the town. The better part of a mile lay between the two houses. The stores and business houses were the third point of a triangle of which the Chase home and Amos’s formed the other angles.