"Thunder!" he exploded. This unaccountable sister had the most amazing
way of setting a target to jingling and then calmly walking off. The
thought of her husband's marrying again evidently gave her no concern
whatever.
"Not nice of you to be keeping your own prospects a dark secret when I'm
living under the same roof with you. Out with it."
"Don't be foolish, Lois."
"But why don't you be a good brother and 'fess up? As I remember they're
both nice women--quite charming and fine. I should think you'd take your
pick first, and then let Tom have what's left. You deserve well of the
world, and time flies. Don't you let my coming back here interfere with
your plans. I'm not in your way. If you think I'm back on your hands,
and that you can't bring home your bonny bride because I'm in your
house, you're dead wrong. You ought to be relieved." She ended by
indicating the memorandum of her assets; and then tore it into bits and
began pushing them into a little pile on the table.
"It must be Rose--the musical one. Phil has told me about the good times
you and she and Tom have had in Buckeye Lane. I looked all over the
house for your flute and wondered what had become of it; so you keep it
there, do you--you absurd brother! Rose plays the piano, you flute, and
Tom saws the 'cello, and Nan and Phil are the audience. By the way, Mrs.
King mentioned a book Nan Bartlett seems to be responsible for--'The
Gray Knight of Picardy.' Everybody was reading it on the train when I
came out, but I didn't know it was a Montgomery production. Another
Hoosier author for the hall of fame! It comes back to me that Nan always
was rather different--quiet and literary. I don't doubt that she would
be a splendid woman for Tom to marry."
"I don't know anything about it," said Amzi.
"Humph!" She flung the scraps of paper into the air and watched them
fall about him in a brief snowstorm. She seemed to enjoy his
discomfiture at the mention of the Bartletts. "Let's not be silly, you
dear, delightful, elusive brother! If you want to marry, go ahead; the
sooner the better. And if Tom wants to try again, I'll wish him the best
luck in the world--the Lord knows I ought to! I suppose it's Nan, the
literary one, he's interested in. She writes for the funny papers; Phil
told me that; and if she's done a book that people read on trains,
she'll make money out of it. And Tom's literary; I always had an idea
he'd go in for writing sometime."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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