Regardless of her optimistic assertion to Robin and Peter Graham that right must triumph in the end, Marjorie found it hard to resign herself to watchful inaction in regard to the dormitory. The winter days came and went with no change in the situation save perhaps the addition of a dozen men to Peter Graham’s working force. It consisted of himself and his quartette of carpenters. He scoured the region extending for twenty-five miles about Hamilton for men. Labor happened to be scarce. Workmen invariably demanded twice as much money for their services as he would pay. The affair of the walk-out had been circulated far and wide in that section. The numbers of workmen he talked with demanded as much as “the Thorne and Foster crew” were receiving.

Miss Susanna Hamilton sputtered volubly to Jonas, Peter Graham and Marjorie at the dire situation. She sent for Marjorie, Robin and the builder on an average of once in every three or four days to discuss the situation. She was at first for bringing in a crew of workmen from one of the large cities and paying them their own price within a certain limit to hurry the completion of the dormitory. She offered to pay the sum needed to do this from her own resources. To this neither Page and Dean nor Peter Graham would hear. In the end they won her over to their way of thinking.

Marjorie’s chief private disappointment lay in the fact that she could not conscientiously begin the compilation of Brooke Hamilton’s papers, prior to writing his biography, until the dormitory question was settled and off her mind. This had been the chief reason for Miss Susanna’s generous proposal.

“I want you and Jerry to come to the Arms in March, sure and certain,” she said more than once to Marjorie. “You are such a conscientious child! You will not humor me at all. Suppose Peter should have to cripple along all spring with a handful of men? Then you and Jerry will miss the dawn of spring at the Arms. Let me tell you you will miss something.”

“Miss Susanna, I’ve made up my mind to come to the Arms the first of March, whether or not the dormitory business is settled.” Marjorie finally made this concession one February afternoon while taking tea with the old lady.

“You are my own Marvelous Manager, and a dear child.” Miss Susanna unexpectedly left her chair, walked around the tea table to Marjorie and hugged her.

“And you are the dearest of dears. I ought to come here by the first of March. I feel it as my duty. And I shall love to be with you. The girls are resigned to Jerry’s and my move. They’ll be here about half the time. I give you warning beforehand. I’ve nothing but chemistry on my list since the beginning of the semester. I only devote a few hours a week to it now. I do wish something would happen to bring some more workmen to the dormitory,” Marjorie ended wistfully.

“Yes, so do I. I could take that Cairns girl and treat her to a good shaking with my own strength of arm.” Miss Susanna resentfully straightened up from her embrace of Marjorie and vengefully worked her arms. “And to think, I’ve never seen her except once, and at a distance.” Miss Susanna resumed her chair and continued: “It is too bad Baretti can do nothing with those Italians at the quarter. It’s the old story. Money changes the color of everything.”

“I was hopeful of Signor Baretti,” Marjorie said, faint disappointment in her reply. “He went over to the quarter several times. He said some one besides Leslie Cairns herself had been influencing the Italians. He thought she might have hired someone. The Italians swore that only Thorne and Foster were responsible for the walk-out. They told Signor Baretti the bosses had offered much money to have the work done quickly. He says they are not telling the truth, but he can’t get at the truth among them. I had a talk with him yesterday. Robin and I stopped at the inn for ice cream. He says he will try again after a while to make the Italians tell him the truth.”

“He is a fine little man,” Miss Susanna said, nodding approval of the odd, whole-souled Italian. “He won’t forget that promise, either.”

Guiseppe Baretti had no intention of forgetting the, to him, solemn promise he had made Page and Dean. The nearly perfect management of his restaurant to which he had long since attained left him a good deal of time to spend as he pleased. Usually he pleased to be busy in the inn where he had achieved affluence. It was his workshop, and he loved it. Now that the “dorm,” also grown into his peculiar affection, was in difficulties it behoved him to become a knight errant.

Imbued with this high purpose he went again and again to the Italian quarter, a patient, open-eared watchful little questioner or listener, as the case might be. February was almost ended when he at last learned something of importance. He came one evening upon Pedro Tomaso and Francisco Vesseli engaged in heated argument. He gathered from the torrent of angry words each hurled at the other the information he was seeking. There had been a “Maestro” at the quarter, it seemed. He had arranged the new scale of wages. Baretti heard over and over again the name “Ravenzo.” When he left the quarter it was with four points fixed in his mind. There had been a “Maestro” at the quarter. His name was Ravenzo. He had come from New York. Then had come the desertion of the “dorm” by the workmen.

What Baretti entertained as a positive belief, the Italians knew nothing of. This was Leslie Cairns’s part in the dormitory trouble. They placed the odium on Thorne and Foster. The long-headed Italian inn keeper laid the primary blame upon Miss “Car-rins.” He firmly believed if “that one” were made to “behave good” the troubles of the dorm would end. He had gleaned here and there enough of Leslie’s past history to know that she was the only child of Peter Cairns, a well-known financier, and that her home was in New York.

After his fruitful visit to the quarter he sat down in his tiny private office at the inn and wrote a long letter in Italian to a countryman of his in New York connected with an Italian confidential agency. The purpose of the letter was to establish the identity and business of one, Ravenzo.

When he had finished the letter he sat very still for a long time and thought about Leslie Cairns. Ever since he had first seen her as a freshman at Hamilton, he had detested her. Now he put her through a mental revue which did not redound to her credit. He wondered how her father could allow her to “boss herself all wrong.” Perhaps her father did not know half she did. There were many such cases. He reflected with old-world wisdom that. “A father don’ want his childr’n do wrong.” He was also of the conviction that, “A father, he can’t punish his childr’n they do wrong, he don’ know they do it.” Guiseppe Baretti was sure that Mr. Car-rins “don’ know much ’bout what his daughter do.”

His knowledge of Italian nature told him that if the scale of wages on the Cairns’s garage was dropped to what it had been when begun by Thorne and Foster, the men of the quarter as well as the American and Irish workman would be glad to go back to the fair employ of Page and Dean under the management of Peter Graham. If Miss Car-rins’s father knew her as she really was perhaps he would come and take her away from Hamilton. Miss Car-rins was of age, but a father was a father. Her father was a “big” man. He probably would have ways to make his daughter behave.

Such was Baretti’s view of the problem he was trying to solve. The next day he sat down and went over the same train of thought with the same deliberation. On the third day thereafter he resigned himself to the composition of a letter in Italian. It was a very long letter and the first draft of it did not please him. For several days he kept patiently at it, re-writing and re-vising. Finally he gave it into the keeping of his Italian manager who was also a high school graduate. Two days afterward the manager returned a neatly typed, well-phrased letter in polite English to the little proprietor. Guiseppe had the pleasure of addressing an envelope to Peter Cairns at his New York offices. Baretti’s last thought in sending the letter was one of consideration for Leslie’s father. He wrote on the lower, left-hand side of the envelope: “For Peter Cairns only.”