Margaret Pettifer sat down in her chair.
"Where was Dick yesterday afternoon?"
"Margaret, I don't know."
"I do. I saw him. He was with Stella Ballantyne on the river—in the dusk—in a Canadian canoe." She uttered each fresh detail in a more indignant tone, as though it aggravated the crime. Yet even so she had not done. There was, it seemed, a culminating offence. "She was wearing a white lace frock with a big hat."
"Well," said Mr. Hazlewood mildly, "I don't think I have anything against big hats."
"She was trailing her hand in the water—that he might notice its slenderness of course. Outrageous I call it!"
Mr. Hazlewood nodded his head at his indignant sister.
"I know that frame of mind very well, Margaret," he remarked. "She cannot do right. If she had been wearing a small hat she would have been Frenchified."
But Mrs. Pettifer was not in a mood for argument.
"Can't you see what it all means?" she cried in exasperation.