Silas Bradford's Boy by Joseph C. Lincoln

Denboro was cooling down after a feverish two weeks. As a usual thing the winter months were dull and uneventful, merely a sleepy interlude, a period of semi-hibernation, between the end of the cranberry harvest in the fall, and the spring, with the beginning of the mackerel season and the preparation for the summer influx of boarders and cottagers. This winter had been a marked exception. The bank merger which, after all the surmises and wild prophecies, had come to nothing; the gossip concerning Banks Bradford and his losing his position as attorney for the Ostable Bank; the great fire and its accompaniment of sensational happenings; then the sudden death of Mrs. Capt. Elijah Truman; all these had given the town sufficient to keep its temperature high. Now, a fortnight after the Truman funeral, there was a drop. At the post office, at lodge meetings and sewing circles, they were beginning to get back to normalcy, to speak of everyday matters, such as whether or not the hotel would build the addition it had long contemplated, and to resume discussion concerning the amount of salary to be paid the principal in the high school.

Of course the Truman name was still frequently mentioned. The amount of her estate and just how wealthy Elizabeth Cartwright, her sole heir, would be were unfailing subjects of speculation. Then, too, the fact that Elizabeth had chosen Judge Bangs as her business adviser was of great interest and the cause of surprised chatter. Every one had taken it for granted that Christopher Trent would act in that capacity, but she and Mr. Trent were, apparently, not as intimate as they had been during her grandmother's life. There were all sorts of stories drifting about. When he and she met, so it was said, she was very cool, even distant. At the funeral he had ridden in the carriage with her, and had been one of the little group of intimate friends and mourners beside the grave, but now, when she was temporarily occupying a suite of rooms at the Malabar Hotel, he never called. No, that was not exactly true: Rinaldo Bassett reported him as having called twice, but each time she had seen him only in the lobby and he had remained but a very short time. "Chris was lookin' pretty sour and out of sorts," according to the Bassett estimate.