Walter stared at his sister; then grinned faintly, and nodded at Russell as the latter lifted his hat in salutation. Alice uttered an incoherent syllable of exclamation, and, as she began to walk faster, she bit her lip hard, not in order to look wistful, this time, but to help her keep tears of anger from her eyes.
Russell laughed cheerfully. “Your brother certainly seems to have found the place for 'colour' today,” he said. “That girl's talk must be full of it.”
But Alice had forgotten the colour she herself had used in accounting for Walter's peculiarities, and she did not understand. “What?” she said, huskily.
“Don't you remember telling me about him? How he was going to write, probably, and would go anywhere to pick up types and get them to talk?”
She kept her eyes ahead, and said sharply, “I think his literary tastes scarcely cover this case!”
“Don't be too sure. He didn't look at all disconcerted. He didn't seem to mind your seeing him.”
“That's all the worse, isn't it?”
“Why, no,” her friend said, genially. “It means he didn't consider that he was engaged in anything out of the way. You can't expect to understand everything boys do at his age; they do all sorts of queer things, and outgrow them. Your brother evidently has a taste for queer people, and very likely he's been at least half sincere when he's made you believe he had a literary motive behind it. We all go through——”
“Thanks, Mr. Russell,” she interrupted. “Let's don't say any more.”
He looked at her flushed face and enlarged eyes; and he liked her all the better for her indignation: this was how good sisters ought to feel, he thought, failing to understand that most of what she felt was not about Walter. He ventured only a word more. “Try not to mind it so much; it really doesn't amount to anything.”