Of course the partners asked hundreds more questions concerning the plans. Mary's answers were still disappointingly vague. Before she could tell just what she meant to do, she said she must be sure, and she was not sure yet. A great deal would depend upon her Boston trip. They must be patient until she returned from that.
So they were patient—that is to say, Zoeth was really so and Captain Shadrach was as patient as it was his nature to be. Mary was absent nearly a week. When she returned she had much to tell. She had visited Mr. Green at his office on Commercial Street. His surprise and embarrassment were all that she had prophesied. He offered profuse apologies for his blunder at the Howes'.
“Of course, if I had known of your relationship to Captain Gould and Mr. Hamilton,” he began, “I should never—Really, I am—I assure you I hadn't the slightest idea—”
He was floundering like a stranded fish. Mary helped him off the shoals by taking the remainder of his apologies for granted.
“Of course you hadn't,” she said. “But I am very glad you told me, Mr. Green. It was high time I knew. Don't say another word about it, please. I have come to you to ask advice and, perhaps, help of a sort. May I have a little of your time?”
Mr. Green seized the opportunity thus offered. Indeed, she might have time, all the time she wanted. Anything in his power to do—and so on. Being a bachelor and something of an elderly beau who prided himself upon making a good impression with the sex, it had annoyed him greatly, the memory of his mistake. Also he had been distinctly taken with Mary and was anxious to reinstate himself in her opinion. So his willingness to atone was even eager.
“As it happens,” he said, “I am not at all busy this afternoon. I can give you the rest of the day, if you wish. Now what can I do for you?”
Mary explained that she had come to speak with him concerning her uncles' business affairs, his house being Hamilton and Company's largest creditor. She told of her investigations, of the condition in which she had found the accounts, and of her determination to remain at South Harniss and work for the upbuilding of the concern.
“Of course I am not a business person like yourself, Mr. Green,” she said. “I am only a girl. But I worked in my uncles' store and, in a way, managed it for two years or more before I came to Boston to school. Beside that I have talked during these last few days with some of South Harniss's most prominent people—permanent residents, not summer people. From what they and others tell me I am convinced that the sole reason why my uncles' business has fallen behind is because of a lack of keeping up to the times in the face of competition. Everyone likes Uncle Zoeth and Uncle Shadrach and wishes them well—they couldn't help that, you know.”
She made this assertion with such evident pride and with such absolute confidence that Mr. Green, although inclined to smile, felt it might be poor judgment to do so. So he agreed that there was no doubt of Shadrach's and Zoeth's universal popularity.