“No, Mr. Joslin,” said she, quickly. “You’ll learn. You wouldn’t be unhappy, I think. I want you to feel that we want to help you. Let my husband take care of the business part. I’ll see what I can do toward getting you a chance to study. If money is good for anything, Jim, it ought to be good for just some such thing as this.” “Is it a trade, man?” said the Northerner suddenly. “I believe I’ll go with ye, Ma’am,” said David Joslin quietly for his reply. He did not speak to the man. It was a trade! When Jimmy Haddon stepped back once more into the house, to the side of the table where the flickering oil lamp stood, he caught the Widow Dunham gaily about the shoulders, chucked her under the chin once more, and kissed her fair on the lips. It chanced he did this just as his wife came into the hall, so that she saw the whole transaction. She made no comment. She also had made her trade, years ago, when she married. If she had lost, she would not yet complain. But Joslin saw the hot flush on her cheek. CHAPTER IX POLLY PENDLETON “WELL, Marcia, here we are,” said James Haddon, as at last their long railway journey drew to its close in the swift sweep of the train up the gates of the great city by the sea. “Better begin to round up your wild man—I saw him standing in the vestibule looking out of the window as though he was in a trance. What are we going to do with him, now we’ve got him?” “We’ll take him with us to our home, of course, Jim. He’d be lost anywhere else. He knows no more than a child.” “Pretty husky child, some ways,” said Haddon. “Well, all right, all right! I suppose you’re glad he’s different from me. You don’t seem to have a lot of use for me any more, some way—you’ve been like a clam ever since we left New York, and you’re more like a clam now that we’re getting back. There’s worse fellows in the world than Jimmy Haddon, and maybe you’ll live to see it yet. I’ll show you, if this deal goes through—and it will if your wild friend makes good. “But now here we are getting into the tube—I’d better catch the wild man, or he may get scared and jump off the train. All right—we’ll take him up home.” The rushing whirl of the city received them—the city, a place occupied, so it seemed to this stranger, with sad-faced madmen hurrying here and yon without purpose. Mad—mad—hopelessly mad—so it all seemed to David Joslin as, himself frightened with the noise, the clamorings, the uncertainty of it all, he finally emerged from the gates of the railway station and stood close to the side of the woman who now made his main reliance in this new world of the great Outside.