It was one of his grievances that he had to do the marketing—one could not depend on Sherwood’s single small store—so Baldy with dreams in his head drove twice a week to the butcher’s stall in the old Center Market to bring back chops, or a porterhouse, or a festive small roast.

He had no time for it in the mornings, however. His little Ford took him over the country roads and through the city streets and landed him at the Patent Office at a quarter of nine. There, with a half hour for lunch, he worked until five—it was a dog’s life and he had other aspirations.

Jane, left to herself, read the paper. One headline was sensational. The bride of a fashionable wedding had been deserted at the altar. The bridegroom had failed to appear at the church. The guests waiting impatiently in the pews had been informed, finally, that the ceremony would be postponed.

Newspaper men hunting for the bridegroom learned that he had left a note for his best man—and that he was on his way to southern waters. The bride could not be seen. Her uncle, who was also her guardian, and with whom she lived, had stated that there was nothing to be said. That was all. But society was on tiptoe. Delafield Simms was the son of a rich New Yorker. He and his[12] bride were to have spent their honeymoon on his yacht. Edith Towne had a fortune to match his. Both of them belonged to old and aristocratic families. No wonder people were talking.

[12]

There was a picture of Miss Towne, a tall, fair girl, in real lace, orange blossoms, seed pearls——.

Pride was in every line of her. Jane’s tender fancy carried her to that first breathless moment when the bride had donned that gracious gown and had surveyed herself in the mirror. “How happy she must have been.” Then the final shuddering catastrophe.

Sophy arrived at this moment, and Jane told her about it. “She’ll never dare trust anybody, will she?”

Sophy was wise, and she weighed the question out of her wide experience of human nature. She could not read or write, and she was dependent on those around her for daily bulletins of the way the big world went. But she had worked in many families and had had a family of her own. So she knew life, which is a bigger thing sometimes than books.

“Yo’ kain’t ever tell whut a woman will do, Miss Janey. Effen she a trustin’ nature, she’ll trus’ and trus’, and effen she ain’ a trustin’ nature, she won’t 

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