It was due in part to recollections of this legend and others of a
similar character that people laughed when they said, "Oh yes, I know
Dave BEASLEY!"
Altogether, I should say, Beasley was about the most popular man in
Wainwright. I could discover nowhere anything, however, to shed the
faintest light upon the mystery of Bill Hammersley and Simpledoria. It
was not until the Sunday of Miss Apperthwaite's absence that the
revelation came.
That afternoon I went to call upon the widow of a second-cousin of mine;
she lived in a cottage not far from Mrs. Apperthwaite's, upon the same
street. I found her sitting on a pleasant veranda, with boxes of
flowering plants along the railing, though Indian summer was now close
upon departure. She was rocking meditatively, and held a finger in a
morocco volume, apparently of verse, though I suspected she had been
better entertained in the observation of the people and vehicles
decorously passing along the sunlit thoroughfare within her view.
We exchanged inevitable questions and news of mutual relatives; I had
told her how I liked my work and what I thought of Wainwright, and she
was congratulating me upon having found so pleasant a place to live as
Mrs. Apperthwaite's, when she interrupted herself to smile and nod a
cordial greeting to two gentlemen driving by in a phaeton. They waved
their hats to her gayly, then leaned back comfortably against the
cushions--and if ever two men were obviously and incontestably on the
best of terms with each other, THESE two were.
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