Rodney did not answer instantly.  It occurred to him all at once what this “not saying any place” might mean.

Just as he began,—­“You couldn’t go until to-morrow,”—­came Mrs. Argenter’s sharp cry from her room above.  Amy had walked right on into the open, lighted apartment, Mrs. Argenter following, not daring to ask what she came and did this strange thing for, till Amy made her sit down in her own easy chair, and taking her hands, said gently,—­

“It is a telegram from New York.  Mr. Argenter—­is very ill.”  Then Mrs. Argenter cried out, “That’s not all!  I know how people bring news!  Tell me the whole.”  And Sylvie sprang to her feet, hearing the quick, excited words, and leaving Rodney Sherrett standing there, rushed up into the dressing-room.

This was the way the same sort of news came to Sylvie Argenter as had come to the baker’s daughter.  Did it really make any difference—­the different surrounding of the two?  The great house—­the lights—­the servants—­the friends; and the open bake-shop door, the village street, the blunt, common-spoken neighbor-woman, and the boy with the brick loaf?

These two were to be fatherless:  their mothers were both to be widows:  that was all.

Did it happen strangely with the two—­in this same story?  Who know, always, when they are in the same story?  These things are happening every day, and one great story holds us all.  If one could see wide enough, one could tell the whole.

These things happen:  and then the question comes,—­alike in high and low places,—­alike with money and without it,—­what the women and the girls are to do?

Rodney Sherrett took his sister home; drove three miles round and brought Mrs. Argenter’s sister to her from River Point, and then turned toward Dorbury Upper Village and the telegraph office.  But he met Sim Atwill on the way, received the telegram from him, and hurried back.

It was the dispatch of the hour later, and this was it:—­

      “Mr. Argenter died at five o’clock.  His remains will be sent
      home to-morrow, carefully attended.

“PHILIP BURKMAYER.”

CHAPTER V.

SPILLED OUT AGAIN.

There were paragraphs in the papers; there were resolutions at meetings of the Board of Trade, and of the Directors of the Trimountain Bank; there was a funeral from the “late residence,” largely attended; there were letters and calls of condolence; there was making of crape and bombazine and silk into “mourning;” there were friends and neighbors asking each other, after mention of the sad suddenness, “how it would be;” “how much he had left;” “was there a will?”

And there was a will; made three years before.  One hundred thousand dollars, outright, to Increase M. Argenter’s beloved wife; also the use of the homestead; fifty thousand dollars to his daughter Sylvia on her reaching the age of twenty-five, or on her marriage; all else to be Mrs. Argenter’s for her life-time, reverting afterward to Sylvia or her heirs.