checked, "It really was dreadful, wasn't it? Of course it hurt her desperately. You will understand better when I have told you the story. It is the saddest thing that ever happened. I have heard those awful nicknames. I think that the Kat Mortons began that. They got their own nicknames because they are always thinking up nasty ones for other people and starting them, and then you know it is almost impossible to live them down. Now listen, Mr. Harris, I'm going to tell you the story, and it's a long one; but you really ought to know it, since you live here so closely; and even though you have managed to get such a bad start, yet something might work out while you are here, so that you could fix things up to help Mrs. Walters. One never knows what opportunities may develop. Anyway, here's the story as Mrs. Walters told it to me.
"Virginia Walters disappeared four years ago. She was about seventeen then and was the Walters's only child and her mother fairly worshipped her. That little woman used to take pride in stating that she wanted her daughter to grow up to be able to say that she had never wanted anything in her life that she could not have. Of course you know that the Walters are rich and their home beautiful; and Jean, as she was called, was a sort of 'monarch of all she surveyed.' When she was sixteen she went to the mainland to school; but she was miserable away from Hawaii, and of course when she insisted
