“How’s it happen Lu Allen’s so thick with Mrs. Ricketts?” E. J. Fuller inquired. “How’s it come that he——”
“He’s her lawyer,” Mrs. Williams informed him, “and he was executor of the Cope will, and all. Besides that, he used to be awful attentive to her, and nobody was hardly certain which she was goin’ to take, Lu Allen or Tom Ricketts, right up to a year or two before she got married. Looks like Lu was goin’ to get a second chance, and money throwed in!”
“Well, Lu’s a talker, but he’ll have to talk some now!” P. Borodino Thompson announced thoughtfully. “I used to know her, too, but I never expected she was going to turn out like this!”
“You and I been gettin’ to be pretty fair friends, Bore,” said Mr. Fuller, genially, as the group broke up. “Think you could kind of slide me in along with you when you go up there to call?”
“No, sir!” Mr. Thompson replied emphatically. “Red-headed Lu Allen isn’t much of a rival, but he’s enough for me. If you think of starting in, first thing I do I’m going to tell her you’re an embezzler. I’m going home now to get out my cutaway suit and white vest, and you can tell ’em all to keep out of my road! I’m going calling this evening, right after supper!”
“Never mind!” Fuller warned him. “I’ll get up there some way!”
Meanwhile, in the sun-checkered shadow of a honeysuckle vine that climbed a green trellis beside an old doorway, Mr. Lucius Brutus Allen was taking leave of his lovely friend.
“Will you come this evening, Lucius, and help me decide on some remodeling for the house?” she asked; and probably no more matter-of-fact question ever inspired a rhapsody in the bosom of a man of thirty-five.
“No, thanks,” said Mr. Allen. “I never could decide which I thought your voice was like, Lucy: a harp or a violin. It’s somewhere between, I suspect; but there are pictures in it, too. Doesn’t make any difference what you say, whenever you speak a person can’t help thinking of wild roses shaking the dew off of ’em in the breezes that blow along about sunrise. You might be repeating the multiplication table or talking about hiring a cook, but the sound of your voice would make pictures like that, just the same. I had to hear it again to find out how I’ve been missing it. I must have been missing it every single day of these ten years whether I knew it or not. It almost makes me sorry you’ve come back, because if you hadn’t I’d never have found out how I must have been suffering.”
Mrs. Ricketts looked at him steadily from within the half-shadow of the rim of her pretty hat. “When will you come and help me with the plans?” she asked.