She moved her chair a little farther away from his, and for a short space silence fell between them. Then Reed roused himself to say, “What’s your news, Cronette? I’ve told you mine.”
Ellen wavered a moment before she determined to tell him. “Cousin Rindy is going out to Seattle for a year, maybe longer, to be with her brother. It has just been settled.”
“Great Scott! You don’t say so? And what’s to become of you? Don’t tell me you are going, too.”
“No, I am not. Mabel wanted me to spend the winter with her, but she is so absorbed in getting ready to be married,—I wrote you of that, you know,—that I don’t think I would feel as if I fitted into the scheme of things. I’d be like a little brown wren in a cage of birds of paradise.”
“Humph! not much you would. Of course I remember what you said about Miss Wickham’s engagement, and, if I didn’t, old Tom wouldn’t let me forget.”
“Oh, Reed——”
“Cronine, please.”
“Cronine, then. Do you think Tom is very hard hit?”
“I think he was at first, but he is now in the convalescent stage, is contemplating a mental change of scene, is shunting the picture of Miss Mabel off the stage, and is substituting another.”
“Who is it?”