"Gentlemen," it read: "Will you kindly take immediate steps to find Miss Sarah Burch and pay over to her twenty-five thousand dollars from my father's residuary estate. I am entirely satisfied that this was his wish. I am returning to Cambridge to-day. If necessary you can communicate with me there.
"Yours very truly,
"PAYSON CLIFFORD."
One might suppose that a legatee to twenty-five thousand dollars could be readily found; but Miss Sadie Burch proved a most elusive person. No Burches grew in Hoboken—according to either the telephone or the business directory—and Mr. Tutt's repeated advertisements in the newspapers of that city elicited no response. Three months went by and it began to look as if the lady had either died or permanently absented herself—and that Payson Clifford might be able to keep his twenty-five thousand with a clear conscience. Then one day in May came a letter from a small town in the central part of New Jersey from Sadie Burch. She had, she said, only just learned entirely by accident that she was an object of interest to Messrs. Tutt & Tutt. Unfortunately, it was not convenient for her to come to New York City, but if she could be of any service to them she would be pleased, etc.
"I think I'll give the lady the once-over!" remarked Mr. Tutt, as he looked across the glittering bay to the shadowy hills of New Jersey. "It's a wonderful day, and there isn't much to do here...."
"Sadie Burch? Sadie Burch? Sure, I know her!" answered the lanky man driving the flivver tractor nearby, as he inspected the motor carrying Mr. Tutt. "She lives in the second house beyond the big elm—" and he started plowing again with a great clatter.
The road glared white in the late afternoon sun. On either side stretched miles of carefully cultivated fields, the country drowsed, the air hot, but sweet with magnolia, lilac and apple blossoms. Miss Burch had obviously determined that when she retired from the world of men she would make a thorough job of it and expose herself to no temptation to return—eight miles from the nearest railroad. Just beyond the elms they slowed up alongside a white picket fence enclosing an old-fashioned garden whence came to Mr. Tutt the busy murmur of bees. Then they came to a gate that opened upon a red-tiled, box-bordered, moss-grown walk, leading to a small white house with blue and white striped awnings. A green and gold lizard poked its head out of the hedge and eyed Mr. Tutt rather with curiosity than hostility.
"Does Miss Sadie Burch live here?" asked Mr. Tutt of the lizard.
"Yes!" answered a cheerful female voice from the veranda. "Won't you come up on the piazza?"
The voice was not the kind of voice Mr. Tutt had imagined as belonging to Sadie Burch. But neither was the lady on the piazza that kind of lady. In the shadow of the awning in a comfortable rocking chair sat a white-haired, kindly-faced woman, knitting a baby jacket. She looked up at him with a friendly smile.
"I'm Miss Burch," she said. "I suppose you're that lawyer I wrote to? Won't you come up and sit down?"
"Thanks," he replied, drawing nearer with an answering smile. "I can only stay a few moments and I've been sitting in the motor most of the day. I might as well come to the point at once. You have doubtless heard of the death of Mr. Payson Clifford, Senior?"
Miss Burch laid down the baby-jacket and her lips quivered. Then the tears welled in her faded blue eyes and she fumbled hastily in her bosom for her handkerchief.
"You must excuse me!" she said in a choked voice. "—Yes, I read about it. He was the best friend I had in the world,—except my brother John. The kindest, truest friend that ever lived!"
She looked out across the little garden and wiped her eyes again.
Mr. Tutt sat down upon the moss-covered door-step beside her.
"I always thought he was a good man," he returned quietly. "He was an old client of mine—although I didn't know him very well."
"I owe this house to him," continued Miss Burch tenderly. "If it hadn't been for Mr. Clifford I don't know what would have become of me. Now that John is dead and I'm all alone in the world this little place—with the flowers and the bees—is all I've got."
They were silent for several moments. Then Mr. Tutt said:
"No, it isn't all. Mr. Clifford left a letter with his will in which he instructed his son to pay you twenty-five thousand dollars. I'm here to give it to you."
A puzzled look came over her face, and then she smiled again and shook her head.
"That was just like him!" she remarked. "But it's all a mistake. He paid me back that money five years ago. You see he persuaded John to go into some kind of a business scheme with him and they lost all they put into it—twenty-five thousand apiece. It was all we had. It wasn't his fault, but after John died Mr. Clifford made me—simply made me—let him give the money back. He must have written the letter before that and forgotten all about it!"
You're Another!
"We have strict statutes, and most biting laws."
Measure for Measure, Act I, Scene 4.
"I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have (no laws) at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have."
—Montaigne. Of Experience, Chapter XIII.
Mrs. Pierpont Pumpelly, lawful spouse of Vice President Pumpelly, of Cuban Crucible, erstwhile of Athens, Ohio, was fully conscious that even if she wasn't the smartest thing on Fifth Avenue, her snappy little car was. It was, as she said, a "perfec' beejew!" The two robes of silver fox alone had cost eighty-five hundred dollars, but that was nothing; Mrs. Pumpelly—in her stockings—cost Pierpont at least ten times that every year. But he could afford it with Cruce at 791. So, having moved from Athens to the metropolis, they had a glorious time. Out home the Pierpont had been simply a P. and no questions asked as to what it stood for; P. Pumpelly. But whatever its past the P. had now blossomed definitely into Pierpont.
Though the said Pierpont produced the wherewithal, it was his wife, Edna, who attended to the disbursing of it. She loved her husband, but regarded him socially as somewhat of a liability, and Society was now, as she informed everybody, her "meal yure."
She had eaten her way straight through the meal—opera box, pew at St. Simeon Stylites, Crystal Room, musicales, Carusals, hospital entertainments, Malted Milk for Freezing France, Inns for Indigent Italians, Biscuits for Bereft Belgians, dinner parties, lunch parties, supper parties, the whole thing; and a lot of the right people had come, too.
The fly in the ointment of her social happiness—and unfortunately it happened to be an extremely gaudy butterfly indeed—was her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Rutherford Wells, who obstinately refused to recognize her existence.
At home, in Athens, Edna would have resorted to the simple expedient of sending over the hired girl to borrow something. But here there was nothing doing. Mrs. Rutherford had probably never seen her own chef and Mrs. Pumpelly was afraid of hers. Besides, even Edna recognized the lamentable fact that it was up to Mrs. Wells to call first, which she didn't. Once when the ladies had emerged simultaneously from their domiciles Mrs. Pumpelly had smilingly waddled forward a few steps with an ingratiating bow, but Mrs. Wells had looked over her head and hadn't seen her.
Thereupon the iron had entered into Mrs. Pumpelly's soul and her life had become wormwood and gall, ashes in her mouth and all the rest of it. She proposed to get even with the cat at the very first chance, but somehow the chance never seemed to come. She hated to be living on the same street with that kind of nasty person. And who was this Wells woman? Her husband never did a thing except play croquet or something at a club! He probably was a drunkard—and a roo-ay. Mrs. Pumpelly soon convinced herself that Mrs. Wells also must be a very undesirable, if not hopelessly immoral lady. Anyhow, she made up her mind that