After smoking a while and watching him between puffs, it flashed on me all at once that I was pretty thick. A word or two my cousin Nell had let slip--not so much what she said as the way she said it--gave me a hint of a whole lot of things. Looking at Maurice now I asked him if he had seen my cousin or Miss Foster lately. He flushed up as he looked at me, and I saw that whatever he was thinking of it had not been far away from what I had been thinking of. "No, I haven't seen them"--slowly. "How is your cousin?" "Oh, she seems to be all right. They were both in to the store this morning." "What doing?" I thought he was beginning to worry, but I tried not to let on that I noticed it. I was beginning to feel like a sleuth, or a detective, or a diplomat, or something. "Well, I don't know. Nell said they came in to see me, but all that happened that I had any hand in was to weigh her. She gained another pound last week, and it's worrying her. The more exercise she takes the heavier she gets, she says. She's a hundred and thirty-one now. Of course, while they're there Withrow had to help out and make himself agreeable, especially to Miss Foster, but I can't see that she warms up to him." "Ha? No? You don't think so?" "Not much, but maybe it's her way. She's pretty frosty generally anyway, different from my cousin--she's something like." "Yes, your cousin is all right," said Maurice. "You bet," I said. "She don't stand around and chill the air." "Why--does Miss Foster always? Is that her way? I--don't--know--much about her." "Well, I don't know so very much myself--mostly what my cousin tells me. Still, I guess she's all right; but she strikes me as one of the kind that might make an awful lot of a man and never let on until she was dead sure of him." "H-m--That means she could think a whole lot of Withrow and not let on, Joe?" I tried to look at Maurice like my oldest brother used to look at me sometimes when he tried to make me feel that I was a very green kid indeed, and said, "Well, if she's the kind to care for a man like Withrow, all I've got to say is that she'll deserve all she'll get. He's no good." "That may be, but how's she to know? I know, you know, and half the men in Gloucester know that he's rotten; but take a woman who only sees him at his best and when he's watching out--how's she to know?" "I don't know, but being a woman she ought to," was all I could say to that. It came into my mind just then that when I next saw my cousin Nell I'd tell her what I really knew, and more than that--what I really thought of my old employer. Perhaps she'd carry it to Miss Foster. If it was to be Maurice or Withrow, I knew on which side I was going to be.