The blind gentleman with his son and the Chinese cook moved into the Hathaway house very quietly, so quietly that nobody saw them when they came, although Aunt Hannah Conant took particular pains to watch for them. They must have come in while she was seeing to it that the ice man didn’t track up her clean kitchen. They had paid a month’s rent in advance, procured the key from the agent, and taken possession.

Aunt Hannah was very curious about them, but, watch as she might, she could see no sign of activity in the now occupied house.

“The idea of people calling themselves Christian and having a heathen Chinese to do their work!” she grumbled to Irene and her husband.

“I haven’t heard that they called themselves Christian,” Peter Conant shouted in reply.

“Not Christians! Heavens! You don’t suppose Mary Louise would rent to infidels? I don’t think such a crime should be tolerated in the United States of America.”

There was no stopping Aunt Hannah when she took the bit of argument between her teeth and removed her trumpet from her ear.

“I intend to go over and find out for myself,” she insisted. “I fancy the blind man would be glad of a little company, anyhow, even if he is an unbeliever.”

“Will you just go and ask what their religious opinions are, Aunt Hannah?” laughed Irene, placing the trumpet in her aunt’s ear and holding it there.

“No, but I’ll make a neighborly call and ask them to come sit in my pew at church.”

“Chinese cook and all?” inquired her husband.

“Why not? I do hope he’ll tuck in his shirt though.”

Aunt Hannah Conant was as good as her word and, after a few days, put on her bonnet and, taking a pan of fresh rolls, hot from the oven and wrapped in one of her best napkins, went over to call on the blind gentleman and his son and incidentally to find out what their religious beliefs were and if the Chinese cook had been converted to Christianity or still ate bird’s nest soup and roasted rats.

She had to ring several times before the door was opened.

“The rolls will get cold if they are not taken in out of the air,” she grumbled.

Finally, the door opened just a wee crack and the Chinaman’s face appeared. Aunt Hannah, not having heard the approach of the domestic, jumped as she realized his ugly face was so close to hers.

“Oh!” she said. “I just came over to bring your poor master some fresh bread and to call on him,” and Mrs. Conant stuck her trumpet in her ear and handed the snowy napkin of rolls to the man.

“Thank ee, klindly, but mlaster not ploor and not hungly.”

Aunt Hannah found herself alone with the hot rolls clasped to her indignant bosom.

“Well I never! Of all the impertinence! I have always been taking new neighbors some little friendly offering. To think of this heathen Chinese speaking to me in that way!” She stalked home and was so wrought up and indignant she forgot to take off her bonnet. As for the Chinaman, he laughed until his queue bounced up and down like a bell rope. The blind gentleman, who had overheard his reply to the would-be friendly neighbor, laughed also and the son seemed to be equally amused.

“The only thing is I wish you had taken in the rolls. I must say I should have liked a taste of good homemade bread. Yours is atrocious, Wink Lee.”

The Chinaman laughed and replied in good English that the young master had better try his hand at breadmaking; perhaps he could do better.

The tenants had been in the Hathaway house for four or five days. They seemed to be enjoying the peace and quiet of the establishment. The blind gentleman and his son were together constantly and never ran out of conversation. Sometimes they called Wink Lee to the library and would hold long and rather intimate talks with him. The books interested the son more than anything in the house, but he did not read much, only looked them over, taking down volume after volume and running through the pages slowly and laboriously.

Four days and four nights had the new neighbors been in the house and never a peep had Aunt Hannah Conant had at them except the one glimpse she had been treated to of the heathen Chinese’s evil countenance through the crack in the front door. The shades all over the house were kept down and, on the side next to the Conants’, the blinds remained closed.

“Anybody would think the whole bunch of them were blind and not just the old gentleman,” Aunt Hannah declared testily. “If there is anything I hate it is unneighborly neighbors.”

“What difference does it make?” Mr. Peter Conant would ask. “It is better to have neighbors who mind their own business than ones who run in your back door, for instance.”

“I’d like to see that pig-tail coming in my back door. I’d put him where he belongs. ‘Not hungly!’ when I took a pan of my very best light rolls to the ungrateful turnupnosed peacocks.”

On the fifth night of their occupancy at about midnight the tenants were aroused by the sound of a voice in the back yard calling softly, “Aunt Sally! Uncle Eben! Please let me in!”

Gravel was thrown against the back upstairs window. There was no response to this pleading and then the call was louder and more persistent, “Aunt Sally! Uncle Eben! Wake up!”

Then the doorbell was rung, at first gently, and then with more force.

After much delay, Wink Lee crept down the front steps and opened the door just a tiny crack.

“Uncle Eben, this is I! Don’t you know me?”

“I’m not Luncle Leben.”

“Oh, then they have a new butler. Well, let me in whoever you are.”

The would-be intruder was a tall young man, shabby and travel-stained, but with an air of breeding and a poise about him that would have impressed any ordinary butler. But Wink Lee was not an ordinary butler and was not at all impressed. He merely slammed the door in the young man’s face.

“Well, you chink, do you think for an instant that I am going to leave? I’ll ring here all night before I’ll give up.” He accordingly pressed the electric bell with a determined finger.

The inmates stood this noise for about five minutes and then, from a second story window, came an indignant voice, “Leave this instant, sir, or I shall call up the police.”

“Excuse me, madam,—I—I—used to live here and am hunting my—wife—my wife—Mary Louise—Mrs. Dexter.”

There was an involuntary exclamation from the person above and then silence.

“Madame! Whoever you are—can’t you tell me where my wife is?” he entreated.

After some delay the Chinaman appeared again at the door.

“Mly mlaster say he no got no lidea where your life is. He stlanger in lis town. Just rent this house for one two month.”

“And your mistress—the lady who spoke to me from the window—doesn’t she know Mrs. Dexter?”

“Me glot no mistless. No lady in lis house.” Again the door was shut, and Danny Dexter was shut out for the second time from the house he had called home.

Danny it was, not dead but alive, very much alive and very hungry and nearly wild to see his Mary Louise. The Spokane had gone down with all on board, but Danny did not happen to be aboard when she went down. He had taken to one of the lifeboats with a party of passengers who preferred braving the fierce sea to the slow waiting for the ill-fated Spokane to sink with a chance of help coming before she was submerged. They had been picked up by a schooner bound for the South Seas and it, in turn, had been wrecked. They had with difficulty reached an island that as far as they could tell had never been reached before. There they had been put to their wits to keep alive, but had managed to do it until relief had come in the shape of the usual trading vessel stopping for water and also on the chance of doing some business with natives if there were any.

San Francisco was reached at last by the weary and homesick Danny and there he had taken advantage of the first opportunity he had had to communicate with Mary Louise since the wireless he had sent her from the Spokane. He longed so to hear her voice that he was guilty of the extravagance of calling her on the long distance telephone. The result was not very satisfactory except that he had heard her voice and a whispered “yes” that she was well. He had told her he would be home in a few days just as fast as the train could carry him and for her to tell his firm he was all right and sorry to have fallen down on his contract, but there had been nothing except a buzzing in the receiver and then he had been disconnected. He had tried again, but the operator had repeatedly assured him the line was busy and she would call as soon as she could get the party. His train left in half an hour, so he could not wait for the telephonic connection.

It seemed a very strange thing for Mary Louise to know he was coming, at least he thought she must know it, as she had surely been on the line, and still for her not even to awaken when he rang the bell. She had certainly been at the Hathaway house when he called up only a few days before. Now, here were perfect strangers in the home—not all strangers, however, as the voice of the lady who had spoken from the window was certainly familiar. Whose could it have been? Where was his Mary Louise?