Never in anything else had she been inquisitive or prying where the man was concerned; but she felt that this letter had the heart of a story, and she had made up fifty stories which she thought would fit the case of J.G.Kerry, who for over four years had lived in her mother's house.

He had become part of her life, perhaps just because he was a man,--and what home is a real home without a man ?--perhaps because he always had a kind, quiet, confidential word for her, or a word of stimulating cheerfulness; indeed, he showed in his manner occasionally almost a boisterous hilarity.

He undoubtedly was what her mother called "a queer dick," but also "a pippin with a perfect core," which was her way of saying that he was a man to be trusted with herself and with her daughter; one who would stand loyally by a friend or a woman.

He had stood by them both when Augustus Burlingame, the lawyer, who had boarded with them when J.G.Kerry first came, coarsely exceeded the bounds of liberal friendliness which marked the household, and by furtive attempts at intimacy began to make life impossible for both mother and daughter.
Burlingame took it into his head, when he received notice that his rooms were needed for another boarder, that J.G.Kerry was the cause of it.
Perhaps this was not without reason, since Kerry had seen Kitty Tynan angrily unclasping Burlingame's arm from around her waist, and had used cutting and decisive words to the sensualist afterwards.
There had taken the place of Augustus Burlingame a land-agent--Jesse Bulrush--who came and went like a catapult, now in domicile for three days together, now gone for three weeks; a voluble, gaseous, humorous fellow, who covered up a well of commercial evasiveness, honesty and adroitness by a perspiring gaiety natural in its origin and convenient for harmless deceit.

He was fifty, and no gallant save in words; and, as a wary bachelor of many years' standing, it was a long time before he showed a tendency to blandish a good-looking middle-aged nurse named Egan who also lodged with Mrs.Tynan; though even a plain-faced nurse in uniform has an advantage over a handsome unprofessional woman.