"Miss Grierson hasn't any brother, and she might as well not have any father—better, perhaps. As God hears me, Raymer, I'm going to see to it that she gets a square deal."
"In other words, if she has made up her clever little mind that she wants to be Mrs. Ed. Raymer——"
"That is it, exactly."
"By George! I believe you are in love with her, yourself!"
"I am," was the cool reply.
"Well, of all the— Say, Griswold, you're a three-cornered puzzle to me yet. I don't know what the other three-fourths of the town is saying, but my fourth of it has it put up that you've everlastingly cooked my goose at Doctor Bertie's; that you and Charlotte are just about as good as engaged. Perhaps you'll tell me that it isn't true."
"It isn't—yet."
"But it may be, later on? Now you are getting over into my little garden-patch, Kenneth. If you think I'm going to stand still and see you put a wedding ring on Charlotte Farnham's finger when I know you'd like to be putting it on Madge Grierson's——"
Griswold's low laugh came as an easing of stresses.
"You can't very well marry both of them, yourself, you know," he suggested mildly. And then: "If you were not so badly torn up over this shop trouble, you'd see that I'm trying to give you the entire field. I shall probably leave town to-morrow, and I merely wanted to do you, or Miss Grierson, or both of you, a small kindness by way of leave-taking."