“And I have told Isaiah about your rubbers and oilskins when it rains,” she added, in Shadrach's ear, “and he is not to forget Uncle Zoeth's medicine. Good-by. Good-by. Don't be lonesome. Promise that you won't.”
But to promise is easy and to keep that promise is often hard, as Shadrach observed when he and Zoeth were alone in the sitting-room that evening. “I feel as if the whole vitals of this place had gone away on that afternoon train,” the Captain admitted. “And yet I know it's awful foolish, 'cause she'll only be gone a couple of weeks.”
“I'm glad that question about the name is settled,” mused Zoeth. “That kind of troubled me, that did.”
The partners had worried not a little over the question of whether Crawford's name was legally Smith or Farmer. If it were Farmer and he must be so called in South Harniss, they feared the revival of the old scandal and all its miserable gossip. But when they asked Crawford he reassured them.
“I consulted my lawyer about that,” he said. “My father's middle name was Smith; that is why he took it, I suppose. Edwin Smith is not so very different from Edgar Smith Farmer, shorter, that's all. He and my mother were married under the name of Smith. Mother never knew he had had another name. I was born Smith and christened Smith and my lawyer tells me that Smith I am. If there had been any question I should have petitioned to have the name changed.”
So that question was settled and Shadrach and Zoeth felt easier because of it.
“Zoeth,” observed Shadrach, after replying to his friend's remark concerning the name, “do you know what I kind of felt as if we'd ought to have had here this afternoon?”
“No, Shadrach,” replied Zoeth, “I don't. What was it?”
“Seemed to me we'd ought to had one of them music box chairs. I'd like to have put it under that Keith woman and seen her face when the Campbells started to come. Ho, ho!”
“What in the world made you think of that?” demanded his partner.