"You will—stay where you are!" Ledyard was saying.
"Surely. I intend to stay right here."
Then Farwell laughed and leaned back in his chair.
CHAPTER VII
Life settled into calm after the storm and subsequent happenings. Mary McAdam, having done what she felt she must do, grimly set her house in order and prepared for a new career. The bar, cleansed and altered, became her private apartment. With the courage and endurance of a martyr she determined to fight her battle out where there would be the least encouragement or comfort.
"I'll drink to the dregs," she said to Mary Terhune, who gave up her profession to share the solitude and fortunes of the White Fish; "but while I'm drinking there's no crime in serving my kind. Come summer I'll open my doors to tourists and keep the kind of house a woman—and a God-bepraised widow one at that—should keep. Time was when the best would not come to me, the bar being against their liking. Well, the best may come now and find peace."
"'Tis a changed woman you are, Mrs. McAdam."
"No, just a stricken one, Mary. When I sit by those empty graves back of the pasture lot I seem to know that I must do the work of my boys as well as my own—and the time's short! I'm over sixty."
"And looking forty, Mrs. McAdam." The manners of her trade clung to Mrs. Terhune.