Shadrach shook his head.
“No, he ain't,” he said. “He's to home.”
Mary was amazed and a trifle alarmed. One partner of Hamilton and Company was there in the buggy with her. By all the rules of precedent and South Harniss business the other should have been at the store. She knew that her uncles had employed no clerk or assistant since she left.
“But—but is Uncle Zoeth sick?” she asked.
“Sick? No, no, course he ain't sick. If he didn't have no better sense than to get sick the day you come home I'd—I'd—I don't know's I wouldn't drown him. HE ain't sick—unless,” he added, as an afterthought, “he's got Saint Vitus dance from hoppin' up and down to look out of the window, watchin' for us.”
“But if he isn't sick, why isn't he at the store? Who is there?”
The Captain chuckled.
“Not a solitary soul,” he declared. “That store's shut up tight and it's goin' to stay that way this whole blessed evenin'. Zoeth and me we talked it over. I didn't know but we'd better get Abel Snow's boy or that pesky Annabel or somebody to stay while we was havin' supper. You see, we was both sot on eatin' supper with you tonight, no matter store or not, and Isaiah, he was just as sot as we was. But all to once Zoeth had an idea. 'Shadrach,' he says, 'in Scriptur' times when people was real happy, same as we are now, they used to make a sacrifice to the Almighty to show how glad and grateful they was. Let's you and me make a sacrifice; let's sacrifice this evenin's trade—let's shut up the store on account of our girl's comin' home.' 'Good idea!' says I, so we did it.”
Mary looked at him reproachfully.
“Oh, Uncle Shad,” she said, “you shouldn't have done that. It was dear and sweet of you to think of it, but you shouldn't have done it. It didn't need any sacrifice to prove that you were glad to see me.”