"Yes," he said, "she does have him on a leadin' string. I do admit
Mandy's a card."
The girl, quick-witted as she was bright looking, got his point almost at once. "You mean she was a Card before she married him?"
"And she's a Card yet," Cap'n Abe said, nodding. "Guess you know a thing or two, yourself. What can I do for you?"
"You can say: 'Good-evening, Niece Louise,'" laughed the girl, coming closer to the counter upon which the storekeeper still leaned.
"Land sakes!"
"My mother was a Card. That is how I came to see your joke, Uncle Abram."
"Land sakes!"
"Don't you believe me?"
"I—I ain't got but one niece in the world," mumbled Cap'n Abe.
"An'—an' I never expected to see her."
"Louise Grayling, daughter of Professor Ernest Grayling and Miriam Card—your half-sister's child. See here—and here." She snapped open her bag, resting it on the counter, and produced an old-fashioned photograph of her mother, a letter, yellowed by time, that Cap'n Abe had written Professor Grayling long before, and her own accident policy identification card which she always carried.