"But," I spoke half in protest, "does n't Doctor Rugvie think that any one taking the position ought to know beforehand where she is going and whom she 's going to live with?"
"He might tell you if he was here himself, and then again he mightn't. You see it's this way: he trusts me to use my common sense in accepting an applicant, and he expects the applicant to trust his name for reference to go to the end of the world if he sends her there, without asking questions."
"Oh, the old tyrant!" I laughed a little. "What does he pay?" was my next question.
"Doctor Rugvie! You think he pays? Good gracious, child, you are on the wrong track."
"Then put me on the right one, please." I laid my hand on the hard roughened one.
"I s'pose I might as well; I don't believe the Doctor would mind."
"Of course he would n't." I spoke with a fine, assumed assurance. Delia Beaseley smiled.
"You know I told you that young feller who come here went away without saying so much as 'Thank you'?"
I merely nodded in reply. That question suddenly quenched all the new hope of a new life in me.
"Along the first of the New Year, that was twenty-five years ago, I got a draft by mail from a national bank in this city; the draft was on that bank; it was for five hundred dollars. And ever since, in December, I have had a check for one hundred in the same way. I always get Doctor Rugvie to cash them for me, and he says no questions are answered; after the first year he did n't ask any. The Doctor 's in the same boat. He 's got a draft on that same bank for five hundred dollars every year for the last twenty-five years. He says it's conscience money; and he feels just as I do, that it comes either from the man who claimed to be the woman's husband, or from that other she was married to according to the certificate.—I can't think of that name!