"Are you, really? You are not half as glad as I am to be back. There is no place like home, you know."
"There isn't, and there oughtn't to be," was his quick response. "I've been hoping you'd come to look upon Wahaska as your home, and now I know you do."
"Why shouldn't I?" she laughed, and she was reaching for a paper-wrapped package on the trap seat when he got it for her.
"You are going somewhere?—may I carry it for you?" he asked; but she shook her head and took it from him.
"Only into the bank," she explained; and she was beginning to tell him he must come to Mereside when the sick-man episode obtruded itself, and the invitation was broken in the midst, very prettily, very effectively.
"I know," Raymer said, in instant sympathy. "You have your hands full just now. Will you let me say that it's the finest thing I ever heard of—your taking that poor fellow home and caring for him?"
Gertrude Raymer had once said in her brother's hearing that Miss Grierson's color would be charming if it were only natural. Looking into Miss Grierson's eyes Raymer saw the refutation of the slander in the suffusing wave of generous embarrassment deepening in warm tints on the perfect neck and cheek.
"Oh, dear me!" she said in pathetic protest; "is it all over town so soon? I'm afraid we are still dreadfully 'country' in Wahaska, Mr. Raymer. Please cut it down to the bare, commonplace facts whenever you have a chance, won't you? The poor man was sick, and nobody knew him, and somebody had to take care of him."
Like the doctor, Raymer asked the inevitable question, "Who is he, Miss Margery?" and, like the doctor again, he received the same answer, "I haven't the smallest notion of an idea. But that doesn't make the slightest difference," she went on. "He is a fellow human being, sick and helpless. That ought to be enough for any of us to know."
Raymer stood watching her as she tripped lightly into the bank, and when he went to catch his car the conservative minority had lost whatever countenance or support he had ever given it.