There was one rule the great detective, O’Gorman, had tried to instill in the mind of his daughter Josie, and that was, if possible, never to meddle in other folks’ affairs, but if, by any chance, Fate so ordained it that you must meddle, stick to it until those affairs were settled and the meddling was no longer necessary. Josie felt that, from the beginning, she had put her finger in Mary Louise’s pie and she must not draw it out until she could extract some kind of plum for her little friend.

She did not ring the bell at the Hathaway house but opened the great front door with the latch-key Colonel Hathaway had given her on her first visit to them and which he had insisted upon her keeping and using as a member of the family. She found Mary Louise hovering over rather a forlorn fire in the den.

“Why do people always begin to economize in coal as soon as they get a bit hard up?” Josie asked herself. “It is a strange question in psychology.”

She greeted Mary Louise cheerfully and seizing the poker gave the sputtering coal a few masterly punches which sent the flames leaping up the chimney. Then she vigorously poked out the ashes under the grate and, in a few moments, the fire was burning as brightly and cheerily as though the Colonel’s money had been found and no tragic happenings had recently taken place in that very house which the grate helped to warm.

“That’s better!” laughed Mary Louise. “Uncle Eben is so lugubrious about the coal’s getting low and so strict lately in regard to fires that I find myself shivering half the time. Fires have always been Uncle Eben’s specialty and, now that times are hard, his one idea is to save coal. Uncle Eben and Aunt Sally are my biggest problem right now, Josie.”

Josie smiled in what might almost have been termed a self-satisfied way. Had she not asserted but a few moments before to the girls at the Higgledy Piggledy that Mary Louise would still always be thinking of others?

“What are you planning to do with them, Mary Louise?” she asked quite casually. Josie had an idea that Mary Louise’s friends were handling her too gingerly. Instead of asking direct questions that called for direct answers, they were dealing too much in innuendoes, afraid all the time of intruding. She well knew that Irene’s exquisite sense of propriety would keep her from going into Mary Louise’s affairs until she was asked to discuss them by Mary Louise herself. Josie felt that the girl had brooded long enough and the time had come to talk things over.

“Now don’t you tell me if you’d rather not, but it seems to me you might as well talk it out with me. I’m a kind of father confessor anyhow, you know, honey,” continued Josie.

“Why I want to talk it over, Josie dear. I don’t want to burden anyone with my complicated affairs but—”

“Burden anyone! Why you little goose! Come on now, let’s decide what you are going to do and then let’s do it.”

Mary Louise laughed, and her laugh sounded quite merry and like her old self. “Josie, you certainly do help me with your plain, straight methods. You know, I fancy, that there is no money to be found—none at all—and I am penniless?”

“Yes, I know it, and I’m glad of it!”

“So am I! Wouldn’t that astonish Uncle Peter? He is having a fit, poor man. He has almost determined to begin digging around the place here to try and unearth the treasure. Of course, that is foolishness because we always saw Grandpa Jim come in the house and, if he ever left his room at night, I knew it and was up like a flash for fear he was sick or something.”

“Of course! Colonel Hathaway was not the kind of man to dig holes and put money away. He may have concealed his property somewhere and it will turn up sooner or later. In the meantime, it will be mighty bad business to let it get out that we don’t know where the stuff is, for that might bring down on your place a swarm of treasure seekers who would prove very annoying to you.”

“Uncle Peter thinks he invested most of it in gold mines and he says he hopes to find papers relating to the transaction somewhere.”

“Well now, go on and tell me what you mean to do. You are going to have to make your living and I, for one, think it is a good thing. How are you going to make it?”

“Have you any suggestions?”

“Of course!” answered Josie laconically. “That’s what I’m here for, not just idle curiosity.”

Mary Louise laughed again and Aunt Sally, in the kitchen, stopped a minute from her eternal scrubbing—her only solace of late—and dropped a tear in her bucket of hot suds, but the tear was a kind of happy tear at hearing once more the sound of laughter from her darling young mistress.

“Listen ter that, Eben! That there li’l perliceman gal air in the settin’ room. She sho do cheer up our baby lamb.”

“Yes, an’ she done stirred up the fire too. I ain’t a sayin’ the coal air a gonter las’ out the month if’n we ain’t pow’ful ’ticular.”

“G’long, nigger! You all time talkin’ ’bout coal. If’n you don’t look sharp, when yo’ time comes, Peter’ll be a-sayin’ when you knocks on the pearly gates, ‘Go on down ter perdition, you Eben! You ain’t fit fer nothin’ but stokin’ nohow.’ You much better be makin’ hot, cheerful fires fer po’ li’l Miss Mary Louise than countin’ over yo’ lumps er coal. The Lord air a gonter pervide. He knows as well as anybody an’ better than mos’ that we-alls is quality folk an’ he ain’t a gonter let us go col’.”

“You’s silly, Sally,” declared Eben, nimbly skipping beyond reach of the deluge of hot suds with which Sally retaliated. “‘Co’se you is silly. Ain’t we been a-hearin’ many tales ’bout kings and queens an’ sich what air a beggin’ in the streets since this here war that done stirred up the worl’ ter such a ixtent? If kings an’ queens air took ter beggin’, I don’t see why you air so proudified as ter think we-alls air safe.”

“Humph! Kings an’ queens ain’t nothin’ but furriners—some er them even low down wops an’ sich. I wan’t a talkin’ ’bout kings an’ queens but ’bout sho’ nuf quality folks whose amcestors comed from Virginny.”

And so the old couple wrangled in the kitchen while Mary Louise and Josie continued their talk in the den.

“What is your suggestion?” asked Mary Louise.

“Bonnets and hats! A millinery department of the Higgledy Piggledy! It will pay like preferred stock in the best investment in the country. At first, people will swarm there just to see you being a milliner. You’ll have to submit to being a nine days’ wonder and then, when you do their things so well and put so much style in their hats and bonnets, they will come back because they like what you do. Why, honey, you are going to be the successful business woman of Dorfield.”

“Oh Josie!”

“Certainly you are! You have it in you to be a success. Whatever you have undertaken, you have pushed through with sureness until you have reached the goal. Of course you have been spoiled in a way by having money come too easily but that isn’t going to hurt your business career any. It may help it. It will give you a larger outlook and keep you from being so all-fired particular about small bits of money. I think that is the trouble with so many women who go into business. They have heard so much about ‘taking care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves’ that they spend too much time and thought over unimportant sums and forget the other saying ‘Penny wise and pound foolish.’” Josie was mounted on one of her hobbies and she rode gaily on, clucking to her nag and switching his flanks with proverbs and arguments until Mary Louise was in a gale of merriment.

“Josie, Josie, you are too delicious!”

Aunt Sally stopped scrubbing and arose from her knees.

“Jes’ listen ter that! Lawsamussy, if that ain’t music ter my ol’ years! Git a move on yer, Eben, you ol’ Virginia creeper! I’s a-thinkin’ ’bout stirring up some waffles fer supper. I ’lows our young mistress is done sanctified her stomick sufficient with nothin’ but toast an’ tea, tea an’ toast.”

“Well praise the Lawd! My back an’ front air a stickin’ tergither fer lack er nourishment,” declared Uncle Eben.

In a short while, the aroma of waffles was wafted through the house.

“If my old nose don’t tell no lies—” quoted Josie.

“I believe Aunt Sally is cooking waffles,” finished Mary Louise. “Now you must stay to supper, Josie.”

“Of course I will, if you truly want me. In fact, I think I’ll stay whether you do or not.” “It’s strange how dependent we are on food,” mused Mary Louise a half hour later. Aunt Sally had given the girls a cozy little meal by the fire in the den. The dining room seemed so big and gloomy now that there were no men in the house.

“I believe I have not been eating enough. Aunt Sally brings me something, but I am sure that more than half the time I forget to eat it.”

“Just as I thought! You need a bossy, fussy person more or less like me to egg you on. Now start in and tell me what you are planning to do with these expensive, although devoted, retainers and this fine, extravagant house.” And Josie settled herself comfortably in a big chair by the fire on which Uncle Eben had deigned to waste much coal.

“I simply don’t know—I plan and plan but can’t fix on anything. Of course, Aunt Sally and Uncle Eben will be sad at not living on with me and declare they won’t leave me for the wealth of Greasus as Eben calls Croesus. There is no money in the bank, at least only a tiny bit. Grandpa Jim used to have two accounts, a checking account and a special account, but he seems to have withdrawn the special account and checked very closely on the other. Thank goodness, there are no bills to be paid! Grandpa Jim always kept bills paid up to the minute.”

“That’s one reason I feel that you are going to prove a good business woman. You have his blood in your veins and his ways about you. I see them cropping out constantly. Now, come on and tell me what plans you have made, even though you haven’t fixed on anything.”

“First, I think I’ll sell the car.”

“Which car?”

“The big new one, of course! Grandpa Jim’s old car wouldn’t bring in thirty cents and it is so precious to me somehow, I can’t bear to think of getting rid of it. I feel more strongly about it even than I did about his clothes. He changed his clothes and got rid of them as they wore out, but he hung on to his old car with such pertinacity that I feel like still hanging on to it. It has not been used for months but it’s jacked up out there in the garage. Do you think I am foolish?”

“No, my dear Mary Louise, I think you are very sensible. Certainly, the new car would bring in a tidy sum and give you bank account enough to look around a bit. Have Eben and Sally any savings?”

“Yes, they have been at no expense to speak of for many years and they have always had good wages. You know Grandpa Jim was always lavish in such expenditures. The dear old creatures have come and offered me their savings and are quite outdone because I refuse to touch them. In his will, Grandpa Jim mentions them, leaving them a farm he owns in Virginia and recommending that I see that they are well taken care of. He left them nothing but the farm but, thank goodness, that is a tangible something. I want them to go live on it and I believe they are beginning to look forward to it with some pleasure.”

“Splendid! That is surely a solution as far as the faithful retainers go. Now proceed! How about the house?” Josie was determined now, since she had started Mary Louise, she would keep her going until her plans took some shape and were in working order.

“Oh, the house! I can’t tell what to do about it. It is all I have and Uncle Peter Conant says a forced sale would be a great mistake, but if I can just put off selling it for several years, it might bring in a whole lot. I think I might rent it.”

“Furnished?”

“Y—e—s! But, oh, how I’d hate it! It would be awful to have strangers living with all of our household goods.”

“Yes, so it would, but because persons are strangers is no sign they are not pretty nice. I myself would rather have my things used by persons who could enjoy them than have them stored in heartless warehouses where, no doubt, the rats would gnaw holes in them and they would do nobody any good. I’d rent the house furnished for a goodly sum if possible and be careful about the tenant. Don’t take one who is not responsible. Storing furniture is like pouring money down rat holes. It costs and costs and finally, when you take the things out, they seem of so little value you wonder what on earth you have been paying for all the months or years. Sell or rent, but don’t store unless it is for a given, definite period. You have not thought of selling all your things?”

“I just couldn’t yet. I feel like putting off that evil hour for awhile. Grandpa Jim collected the pictures and rugs and furniture with such care. I can’t contemplate getting rid of them even though I may need the money sorely.”

“Nonsense! You won’t need the money sorely at all, not if you get busy and ship the dear old darkeys and come stay with me at the Higgledy Piggledy and begin to earn your salt and plenty of good beefsteaks to sprinkle it on, to say nothing of butter gravy and bread to sop in it.”

“Oh Josie, you are so funny!”

“Well, settle with the faithful retainers this very night. Call them now and let them know you are going to break up housekeeping tomorrow and they must pack up and start for their farm in Virginia. There is no use in dragging the thing out. Every day that this huge house is kept running is draining your already depleted bank account just that much more than it can stand. Let’s begin tomorrow to sort and ‘pick rags’ and get the house ready for a tenant. There is a lot of work connected with it and we’d best begin immediately.”