“Imagination, pure and simple!” exclaimed Mr. Dunlap, continuing to laugh, enjoying hugely Lucy’s anger.
“Charlton was possibly thinking about something connected with his favorite science and probably did not even see us while apparently he was casting about those peculiar glances that you depict so vividly.”
“Even so, I think it ill-bred and unkind in him to make my husband the subject of a study in ethnology.”
“Ah!” gasped her grandfather, as though a sudden pain had struck his heart. Some new idea had flashed upon his brain, the laughter vanished from lips and the color from his face. He straightened up in his chair while a look of anxiety replaced the merriment that had sparkled in his eyes.
“Why, what is the matter, grandfather?” cried Lucy in undisguised alarm at the change in his countenance.
“Nothing, my darling, it will pass away. Please hand me a glass of water,” the old man answered.
Lucy hastened to fill a glass with water and while she was so engaged Mr. Dunlap struggled to master some emotion that had caused the sudden departure of all his jocoseness of the moment before she said that her husband had been made a subject of a study in ethnology.
“I am better now, thank you, dear; it was just a little twinge of pain that caught me unaware of its approach,” said the old gentleman forcing a smile to his pale lips.
“And now let us talk about your Cousin Jack, and leave alone the vagaries of a moth-eaten old scholar whom you will probably never see again,” he continued, as if eager to banish some disagreeable thought from his mind.