“I do.”
“But it’s nonsense! Julietta’s always ready to come and be an outdoor comrade for anybody; but it’s only because she’s such a good fellow she doesn’t stop to care whether she’s with old married men like John and me, or with the boys of her own age that she’d naturally like to be with a great deal better of course.”
“She’s almost my own age; she’s over thirty,” the grim Mrs. Simms informed him. “The ‘boys of her own age’ are busy elsewhere.”
“Well, she isn’t that kind of a schemer, no matter what her age is, and if she were, why, the last person on earth she’d pick out would be steady old John Tower. He’s absolutely devoted to Mildred, and everybody knows it. And, finally, if poor Julietta is trying to break up Mildred’s hearth and home, what in the world are you so sharp with me about? If it’s John, and not me that Julietta’s after——”
“Didn’t I tell you she uses you as a foil? Who could criticize her for running after another woman’s husband when his own brother-in-law is always chaperoning them? She knows there’s talk——”
“She does? Well, I don’t. You say——”
“I certainly do. Of course there’s talk. There has been for some time.”
“Does Mildred share your idea?” he asked.
“She does—most unhappily!”
“Anne, do you mean to tell me that as sensible a woman as Mildred’s always seemed could actually let herself get worried about——”