"
Larry promised. His grandmother said no more about Maggie, and
presently Larry bade her good-night and made his cautious way, ever on
the lookout for danger, to where he had left his roadster, and thence
safely out to Cedar Crest. But the Duchess sat for hours exactly as he
had left her, her accounts unheeded, thinking, thinking, thinking over
an utterly impossible possibility that had first presented itself
faintly to her several days before. She did not see how the thing
could be; and yet somehow it might be, for many a strange thing did
happen in this border world where for so long she had lived. When
finally she went to bed she slept little; her busy conjectures would
not permit sleep. And though the next day she went about her shop
seemingly as usual, she was still thinking.
That night Joe Ellison came. They met as though they had last seen
each other but yesterday.
"Good-evening, Joe."
"Glad to see you, Duchess."
She held out to him a box of the best cigars, which she had bought
against his coming, for she had remembered Joe Ellison's once
fastidious taste regarding tobacco. He lit one, and they fell into the
easy silence of old friends, taking up their friendship exactly where
it had been broken off. As a matter of fact, Joe Ellison might have
been her son-in-law but for her own firm attitude.
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