“You, Jennie?”
“You did! And you meant Ludlum was a ‘nuisance’; not you. And I don’t think it’s very nice! Do you?”
“Why, I nev——”
But his cousin’s emotions were no longer to be controlled. She rose, trembling. “What a fool I was this afternoon!” she exclaimed bitterly. “I didn’t suspect you; yet I never remembered your being nervous in a thunder-storm before. I thought you were sympathetic, and all the time you were thinking these cruel, wicked things about Luddie and me!”
Lucius rose, too. “You know what I think about you, all the time, Jennie,” he said genially. “John, if you can remember where you put my umbrella when we came in, it’s about time for me to be catching a street-car down to the station.”
She opposed him with a passionate gesture. “No!” she cried fiercely. “You can’t say such things to me and then slip out like that! You tell me I’ve taught my child to be a coward and that I’ve made a spoilt brat of him——”
“Jennie!” he protested. “I was talking about me!”
“Shame on you to pretend!” she said. “You think I’m making John hate Luddie——”
“Jennie!” he shouted in genuine astonishment.
“You do! And you come here pretending to be such a considerate, sympathetic friend—and every minute you’re criticizing and condemning me in your heart for all my little stories to my child—all because—because—” suddenly she uttered a dry sob—“because I want to raise my boy to be a—a poet!”