"You ought to know," asserted Miss Margery, with some asperity. "Isn't it Mr. Edward Raymer?"
Jasper Grierson frowned thoughtfully into space. "Why, yes; come to think of it, I guess he is the man. Anyway, he's one of their—what do you call 'em—trustees?"
"Wardens," corrected Margery.
"Yes, that's it; I knew it was something connected with a penitentiary. What do you want of him?"
"Nothing much of him: but I want a check for five hundred dollars payable to his order."
Jasper Grierson's laugh was suggestive of the noise made by a rusty door-hinge. The tilting of the golden cornucopia had made him a ruthless money-grubber, but he never questioned his daughter's demands.
"Going in for the real old simon-pure, blue-ribbon brand of respectability this time, ain't you Madgie?" he chuckled; but he wrote the check on the spot.
Two hours later, Miss Grierson's cutter, driven by herself, paraded in Main Street to the delight of any eye æsthetic. The clean-limbed, high-bred Kentuckian, the steel-shod, tulip-bodied vehicle, and the faultlessly arrayed young woman tucked in among the costly fur lap robes were three parts of a harmonious whole; and more than one pair of eyes looked, and turned to look again; with envy if they were young eyes and feminine; with frank admiration if they were any age and masculine. For Miss Grierson, panoplied for conquest, was the latest reincarnation of the woman who has been turning men's heads and quickening the blood in their veins since that antediluvian morning when the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair.
Miss Margery drove daily in good weather, but on this crisp January morning her outing had an objective other than the spectacular. When the clean-limbed Kentuckian had measured the length of Main Street, he was sent on across the railroad tracks into the industrial half of the town, and was finally halted in front of the Raymer Foundry and Machine Works.
Raymer was at his desk when the smart equipage drew up before the office door; and a moment later he was at the curb, bareheaded, offering to help the daughter of men out of the robe wrappings.