were eager rushing steps outside, and Elim Brooke burst into the kitchen, a fishing pole in his hand.
“Muth, where’s Lynn? Isn’t she up yet?”
“Yes, up and gone. She and Dana went off on a hike, Elim. What became of you, son? We tried to wait breakfast, but Dana telephoned and Lynnie had to hurry.”
“Shucks!” said the boy, the light of eagerness suddenly going out of his eyes. “That Dana makes me tired! What does he always have to be around for? I was going to take Lynn out fishing. I been down to the store to get a new line. The old one broke. I got Lynn’s line all fixed up, too. Gee! I didn’t think she’d go off like that! The first day! Gee! Now I s’pose it’ll always be like that, won’t it? A fella can’t have his own sister, ever fer a day. Not even fer her birthday! Gee, I’d like to wring his neck!”
“Why son! That’s terrible language! I thought you liked Dana.”
“Oh, I useta! Before he went off and got ta high-hatting! He makes me tired! Met me down by the garage last night, and when I yelled at him he turned around with that weary air he puts on sometimes and gave me the once over before he spoke, and then he said, just as if I was a toad in the mud he hadn’t noticed before, ‘H’warya, Brooke,’ as cool as an icicle. Aw, he’s a pain in the neck! I don’t see what Lynn sees in him! Did he take her in the car?”
“No, they wanted to walk,” said the mother, feeling a sudden necessity of defending Dana. “Lynn thought it would be nice. The car is down at the garage being washed, and they would have had to wait for it.”
“Wait! What for? Why’n’t Dana get up early and wash it himself? I ask you, why did he hafta send it to the garage to be washed? They gotta hose downta Whipples’. He oughtta wash his own car himself. He hasn’t got too lily-fingered for that, has he? Isn’t it respectable for a preacher to wash his own car? I’ll bet Dana suggested they walk. I’d be willing to bet my last cent on that and win!”
“Why, Elim! You distress me!” said his mother anxiously. “You don’t sound like yourself. You shouldn’t be so hard on people. You must remember that Dana is growing up. It isn’t in the least likely he realized he was speaking that way to you. He has always been very fond of you. You know how he used to play ball with you when you were a little fellow.”
“Aw, bah, that was nothing! He wanted to keep in practice during vacation that was all! I don’t see why Lynn wanted to go off with him the first day anyway. When I gave up the tournament just to take her off fishing and show her the new swimming hole, and a lot of things. I thought it was her birthday and I oughtta kinda make her have a good time.”
The boy’s face was all aquiver with disappointment and anger.
“Well, there, son, that’s too bad, and if Lynnie had dreamed you had any such plan she’d have fixed it, I know. She’d have asked you to go with themor”
“Go with ’em! You suppose I’d go with ’em! Not on yer life! I don’t care fer kid-glove expeditions. Fat chance I’d have fer a good time with that Dana Whipple along! Last time I went along with those two all he did was read poetry! Never again fer mine! Got any cake? I’ll go get Pard Wilkins. You tell Lynn I’m off her fer life!” And he dove into the pantry and came out with his hands and his mouth full of gingerbread and disappeared out the back door across the lot toward Pard Wilkins’ house.
His mother looked up to see her mother standing in the kitchen door with pitiful eyes.
“It’s too bad,” she said, looking suddenly frail and tired. “It’s hard to grow up. If they only didn’t have to get separated!”
“Yes,” sighed the mother, “it’s hard to see it. They were always so close to each other I wonder” But she did not say what she wondered.
CHAPTER II
There were other eyes watching the two as they started out for their holiday.
Down at the Whipple house with its wide east window looking toward the mountains, sat old Mrs. Whipple, Dana’s grandmother, in her padded chair with her crutch by her side, her sharp little black eyes losing nothing that went on up the road. She had been cripple for three or four years, the result of a broken hip and rheumatism, but she was nonetheless the head of the house which she owned and bossed as much as when she was on her feet and about.
In the background, behind the old lady’s chair, watching furtively while she dried a handful of silver hot from its rinsing bath after being rubbed in silver suds, stood Amelia Whipple, Dana’s mother. There was a belligerent pride in her heavy, handsome face as she watched her boy swing along by the girl’s side, grace in every line of his body, every movement he made. They were a handsome couple, nobody could deny that, Amelia told herself. Back in her heart was a latent grudge against Lynette’s mother and aristocratic old grandmother, with her cameo face framed in fine old laces and her soft old-fashioned gray silk gowns. She was almost sure that they looked down just the least bit on Dana. Dana who had gone to the most expensive schools and the finest college in the country, while Lynette had had to be content with a little inconspicuous denominational institution in an out-of-the-way place presumably because they couldn’t afford to send her to a larger college. Lynette who lived in a house that had long needed paint! Oh Amelia liked Lynette well enough, knew she was good looking and sweet and even stylish in her way, though she hadn’t bobbed her hair when everybody else did but perhaps it was just as well for a minister’s wife to be conservative, and of course everybody said that bobbing was going to go out pretty soon. But then, land sakes alive, Lynette’s folks had no call to look down on her Dana! She watched them swing away into the blue of the day with a growing flush of pride while she wiped and wiped over and over again an old Whipple fork that had been in the family for a century or more.
But it was Justine Whipple in a prim, high-necked sweeping apron and cap, her hair in old-fashioned crimpers beneath, who stood in the foreground by Grandmother Whipple’s armchair, feather duster in hand, and regarded the revelers with open disapproval. The excursion was to her a personal offense.
Miss Whipple was called “Aunt Justine” by courtesy, but she was really only a cousin distantly removed, being the daughter of a cousin of old Grandfather Whipple. Grandmother Whipple had taken pity on her and given her a home when she was left alone in the world at the age of thirty-five, with only a mere pittance upon which to live. She had accepted the home as her natural right and referred to the pittance as “my property,” but she had been a fixture now so long in the family that no one realized that she had not been born into it. Old Madame Whipple goaded her with sarcasm and scornful smiles, but bore with her from a grim sense of duty. The rest of the family tolerated her and quarreled with her, but she maintained her own calm attitude of superiority and continued to try to set them all right.
Aunt Justine was the first one to speak.
“It seems a pity that those two can’t grow up! I should think Lynette would have a little sense by this time, if that was any kind of college at all that she went to. To think that she would take a whole perfectly good day right out of the week to go off like a child on a picnic! Her first day home, too! Of course Dana felt he had to do what she asked him. She leads him around by the nose. I should think Dana would rebel, now he’s grown up and finished his education. It’s time he was warned that that is no way to manage women, letting them have their own way in everything! I told him this morning that there was no earthly reason why he should not tell her that it wasn’t convenient for him to go today. They could have put it off until another time just as well as not, and when I’m having guests come and there is so much extra to be done. But no! He didn’t think he could tell her to change it. He didn’t think it would be gallant, he said. Well, I say gallantry begins at home. I declare that girl just flings herself at Dana’s head, and I should think it would disgust him. Why don’t you speak to him, Amelia, and open his eyes? It’s your place as his mother to help him to understand