"Won't you have a chair?" offering Dunham's. "I wasn't looking for a fool when I engaged him. Perhaps that explains it."
"You have your hat on, Calvin," remarked Miss Lacey, as she accepted the seat after an investigating sweep of her gloved finger.
"I beg your pardon," returned the disconcerted lawyer, removing his hat and setting it reluctantly on his desk. Then he, too, sat down, passing his hand over his scanty locks.
"Your furniture in the next room is shockingly soiled," she went on. "Why don't you have Hannah come with some good flannel rags and tepid water and ivory soap and furniture polish?"
"It is so old, I don't believe it's worth the trouble," returned the judge pacifically.
"Well, it isn't my place to say you ought to have new; but do look at it the next time you go out there. I've come, Calvin, to see if you've heard about Sam."
Judge Trent settled his head in his neck as though bracing himself. "I learned of it yesterday, Martha. Pray accept my condolences. I should have called on you this evening."
"Excuse me," returned Miss Lacey somewhat tartly, "if I say I don't believe it; and I don't blame you, either. You know very well that there was no more love lost between my brother and me than there was between your brother-in-law and you. Sam didn't make your sister Laura happy, to my shame and sorrow. I'm the one that owes you condolences, and have any time this twenty years."
"Say ten," returned the judge concisely. "Laura's troubles have been over for nearly ten years."
"So they have, poor Laura! I used to think that it was such a beautiful thing that Sam had such an artistic temperament; but how seldom it goes with the practical! Poor Sam had just enough talent to tempt him away from a useful business life, and not enough to make his family comfortable. How I do hope his daughter hasn't inherited his happy-go-lucky, selfish nature; for there is that girl for us to deal with, Calvin." Martha Lacey flashed an anxious look at her vis-a-vis.