"I am deeply
grateful for your valuable service, madam. To whom are we indebted
for my sister's rescue from death?"
The young lady smiled, showing a set of even, white teeth. "Not so
great a service after all. Your sister is a good horsewoman. If she
hadn't been, she would have been thrown long before I reached her."
"But your name, Madam," persisted Quincy. "Her father will wish to
know, and to thank you."
"My name when in Fernborough is Mrs. Emmanuel Howe. When I'm on the
stage, it is Dixie Schaffer. I was born in the South. My father was
Col. Hugh Schaffer of Pasquotank County, North Carolina."
"My father and all of us will feel under great obligations to you."
"I hope he will not. I have no objections to receiving his thanks in
writing, if he is disposed to send them, which I think unnecessary as
you are his representative. But kindly caution him not to suggest or
send any reward, for it will be returned." She bowed to Quincy,
turned her horse's head and rode away.
As Strout entered the store he said to himself, "Bully for her. She
don't bow down to money. She's got brains."
A few days later, however, Miss Dixie Schaffer was the recipient from
the Hon. Nathaniel Adams Sawyer of a beautiful gold pendant in the
shape of a horseshoe, set with pearls. If one could have glanced at a
stub in the lawyer's check book, he would have found the name of a
prominent jeweller, and the figures $300.
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