Olly looked incredulously across the hall toward the door of Mrs. Conroy's chamber.
"Thet's it, Olly," said Gabriel, "Mrs. Conroy's goin' to 'Frisco to see some friends. She's thet bent on goin' thet nothin' 'il stop her. Ye see, Olly, it's the fashion fur new married folks to kinder go way and visit absent and sufferin' friends. Thar's them little ways about the married state, that, bein' onmarried yourself, you don't sabe. But it's all right, she's goin'. Bein' a lady, and raised, so to speak, 'mong fashi'n'ble people, she's got to folly the fashin. She's goin' for three months, mebbe four. I disremember now wot's the fashi'n'ble time. But she'll do it, Olly."
Olly cast a penetrating look at her brother.
"She ain't goin' on my account, Gabe?"
"Lord love the child, no! Wot put thet into your head, Olly? Why," said Gabriel with cheerful mendacity, "she's been takin' a shine to ye o' late. On'y to-night she was wonderin' whar you be."
As if to give credence to his words, and much to his inward astonishment, the door of Mrs. Conroy's room opened, and the lady herself, with a gracious smile on her lips and a brightly beaming eye, albeit somewhat reddened around the lids, crossed the hall, and, going up to Olly, kissed her round cheek.
"I thought it was your voice, and although I was just going to bed," she added gaily, with a slightly apologetic look at her charming dishabille, "I had to come in and be sure it was you. And where have you been, you naughty girl? Do you know I shall be dreadfully jealous of this Mrs. Markle. Come and tell me all about her. Come. You shall stay with me to-night and we won't let brother Gabe hear our little secrets—shall we? Come!"
And before the awe-struck Gabriel could believe his own senses she had actually whisked the half-pleased, half-frightened child into her own room, and he was left standing alone. Nor was he the less amazed, although relieved of a certain undefined anxiety for the child, when, a moment later, Olly herself thrust her curly head out of the door, and, calling out, "Good-night, old Gabe," with a mischievous accent, shut and locked the door in his face. For a moment Gabriel stood petrified on his own hearthstone. Was he mistaken, and had Mrs. Conroy's anger actually been nothing but a joke? Was Olly really sincere in her dislike of his wife? There was but one apparent solution to these various and perplexing problems, and that was the general incomprehensibility of the sex.
"The ways o' woman is awful onsartin," said Gabriel, as he sought the solitary little room which had been set apart for Olly, "and somehow I ain't the man ez hez the gift o' findin' them out."
And with these reflections he went apologetically, yet, to a certain extent, contentedly, as was his usual habit, to bed.