Old man Stewart bent his shaggy eyebrows upon the speaker and replied very slowly and distinctly—
“Yes, I guess her health’s all right as far as we know. She isn’t what she used to be though, an’ I’ll admit that her keeping down as she has done is more than a little puzzling to her mother and me. And I’d about half made up my mind to ask you if you could give us any idea of what ailed her?”
The face that C. B. turned to Mr. Stewart was a study for a picture of complete blank astonishment. For a few moments he could not speak, but sat with his mouth partly open, while Mr. Stewart never relaxed his steady gaze into the young man’s face. Then he found his tongue and said with a sort of burst—
“Why, Mr. Stewart, what can you mean? Except at the outset of the passage, when she arranged for m
