One of the first things he did at the professor's desk was to write a letter to Miss Martha Havering Hazen. Sally had succeeded in finding her address.
"She lives in Whitby, Massachusetts," she announced. "I don't know the name of the street, and I don't know how rich she is."
With this, the affairs of Miss Martha Havering Hazen passed from Sally's mind. She had other things to attend to. Fox wrote Miss Hazen a letter in which he set forth, in a very business-like way, the plight in which the Ladue family found themselves, his desire, and Sally's, that Sally's future should be provided for, and the manner in which it was proposed to provide for the aforesaid future. He finished with the statement that the funds at his command were insufficient for all the purposes which it was desired to accomplish, and he inquired whether she were disposed to give any aid and comfort. Then, having posted this, he waited for the answer.
He waited for the answer so long that he began to fear that his letter might not have reached Miss Hazen; then he waited until, at last, he was convinced that she never received it, and he had begun to think that she must be a myth. When he reached this conclusion, he was sitting on the piazza and Sally and Henrietta and Doctor Galen were coming up the path together. Sally had her hands behind her. She came and stood before Fox, her eyes twinkling.
But Fox would not wait. "Sally," he said, interrupting her, "what makes you think that Miss Martha Hazen is in existence at all. You've never seen her. I'll bet there's no such a person and never was. She's a myth."
"What'll you bet?" she asked promptly.
"Anything you like."
"No, I won't bet, for it wouldn't be fair." This settled it for Sally. In that respect she was different from her father. She was different from her father in some other important respects, too. "Which hand will you have, Fox?"
"I guess I'd better have both."