"Nearly all there is to know," responded Dunham modestly.
"The conventionalities, the proprieties? Where and how girls may live and where and how they can't, for instance? Unattached girls whose relatives don't want them, for I'd like to bet her aunt won't receive her, and if I should go out of my way to urge it she'd probably turn on me and tell me to take my own medicine."
"I'd do my best," returned John, when the exasperated tones had subsided.
"What's the use of obeying St. Paul if your family won't?" went on the lawyer irritably. "What's the good of avoiding girls of your own, only to have somebody else's dumped on you?"
"Be calm, Judge," said Dunham, smiling. "I felt a little stage fright when I thought it was the Evans case; but if it's only girls, I can attend to them with one hand tied behind me."
Judge Trent regarded him wistfully. "John, do you know what you're saying? Isn't yours the presumption of ignorance?"
"What? when I told you I had been in love a dozen times? To be sure, I never met those who've hit me hardest; but cheer up, Judge, I'll stand by you. What is it?"
"I'm not quite ready to say what it is. I'll fence with Fate by myself awhile longer." As he spoke Calvin Trent took from his pocket a letter and began to read it over once more.
"Very well," returned Dunham, picking up his papers. "I'm ready to act as your second."
The following day Miss Martha Lacey locked the door of her cottage behind her and set off for the business district of the town. Her hair was carefully arranged and her bonnet was becoming. Her neighbors were wont to say with admiration that Martha Lacey, though she did live alone and was poor in kith, kin, and worldly fortune, never lost her ambition. She kept an eye to the styles as carefully as the rosiest belle in town.