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“Maud, mamma wants you.”

Maud rose and went out, with a tired smile on her face that emphasized her resemblance to her mother. Bert couldn’t forget that smile, and he was still thinking about the girl, and what her life must be, when Hartley came in.

“By jinks! It’s snifty, as dad used to say. You can’t draw a long breath through your nostrils without freezing y’r nose solid as a bottle,” he announced, throwing off his coat. “By-the-way, I’ve just found out why you was so anxious to get into this house. Another case o’ girl, hey?”

Bert blushed; he couldn’t help it, notwithstanding his innocence in this case. “I didn’t know it myself till about ten minutes ago,” he protested.

Hartley winked prodigiously.

“Don’t tell me! Is she pretty?”

The girl returned at this moment with an armful of wood.

“Let me put it in,” cried Hartley, springing up. “Excuse me. My name is Hartley, book agent: Blaine’s Twenty Years, plain cloth, sprinkled edges, three dollars; half calf, three fifty. This is my friend Mr. Lohr, of Marion; German extraction, soph at the university.”

The girl bowed and smiled, and pushed by him toward the door of the parlor. Hartley followed her in, and Bert could hear them rattling away at the stove.

“Won’t you sit down and play for us?” asked Hartley, after they returned to the sitting-room. The persuasive music of the book agent was in his fine voice.

“Oh no! It’s nearly dinner-time, and I must help about the table.”

“Now make yourselves at home,” said Mrs. Welsh, appearing at the door leading to the kitchen; “if you want anything, just let me know.”

“All right. We will,” replied Hartley.

By the time the dinner-bell rang they were feeling at home in their new quarters. At the table they met the usual group of village boarders: the Brann brothers, newsdealers; old man Troutt, who ran the livery-stable–and smelled of it; and a small, dark, and wizened woman who kept the millinery store. The others, who came in late, were clerks in the stores near by.

Maud served the dinner, while Stella and her mother waited upon the table. Albert admired the hands of the girl, which no amount of work could quite rob of their essential shapeliness. She was not more than twenty, he decided, but she looked older, so wistful was her face.

“They’s one thing ag’in’ yeh,” Troutt, the liveryman, remarked to Hartley: “we’ve jest been worked for one o’ the goldingedest schemes you ever see! ‘Bout six munce ago s’m’ fellers come all through here claimin’ t’ be after information about the county and the leadin’ citizens; wanted t’ write a history, an’ wanted all the pitchers of the leading men, old settlers, an’ so on. You paid ten dollars, an’ you had a book an’ your pitcher in it.”

“I know the scheme,” grinned Hartley.

“Wal, sir, I s’pose them fellers roped in every man in this town. I don’t s’pose they got out with a cent less’n one thousand dollars. An’ when the book come–wal!” Here he stopped to roar. “I don’t s’pose you ever see a madder lot o’ men in your life. In the first place, they got the names and the pitchers mixed so that I was Judge Ricker, an’ Judge Ricker was ol’ man Daggett. Didn’t the judge swear–oh, it was awful!”

“I should say so.”

“An the pitchers that wa’n’t mixed was so goldinged black you couldn’t tell ’em from niggers. You know how kind o’ lily-livered Lawyer Ransom is? Wal, he looked like ol’ black Joe; he was the maddest man of the hull bi’lin’. He throwed the book in the fire, and tromped around like a blind bull.”

“It wasn’t a success, I take it, then. Why, I should ‘a’ thought they’d ‘a’ nabbed the fellows.”

“Not much! They was too keen for that. They didn’t deliver the books theirselves; they hired Dick Bascom to do it f’r them. ‘Course, Dick wa’n’t t’ blame.”