And at the instant, while they stood awkwardly in the rebound from emotions not recognized, Amelia came out from her bedroom, perfected as to hair and raiment, but obviously on edge and cheerfully determined on not showing it. Evidently she liked Old Crow's room no more than she might have guessed.
"O Lord!" said Raven ruefully to his inner self, "we're going to have a cheerful house-party, now ain't we?"
XVII
The afternoon went off moderately well. Nan forgot the late unpleasantness between her and Dick and assumed they were on their usual terms, a fashion of making up more exasperating to him than the quarrel itself. He was too often, he suspected, out of the picture of her immediate mind. But it was most unproductive to sulk. When she forgot and he reproached her for it, she forgot that also; and now when she suggested a walk he got his cap with a degree of cheerfulness and they went out, leaving Raven and his sister together by the fire, for what proved to be one of the rich afternoons of Raven's life. Amelia sat down at the hearth and put her perfectly shod feet to the blaze.
"Now, John," she said crisply, while he was fidgeting about, wondering whether he dared offer her a book and take himself out of doors, "sit down and tell me all about it."
Raven went to the fire, but stood commanding it and her. He might, he thought, as well meet the issue at once.
"What?" he asked. "What do you want to know?"
"You mustn't think I can't sympathize," she informed him, in the clear tone he recognized as the appropriate one for an advanced woman who sees a task before her—"damned meddlers," he was accustomed to call them in his sessions of silent thought—"you mustn't think I'm not prepared. I've heard lectures on it, and since Dick sent me your letter I've read more or less."
"My letter!" groaned Raven. "If ever a chap was punished for a minute's drunkenness——"