Old Mrs. Parker paused: "Well, I don't approve of this Norton Carr."
Anthy laughed. "Why, what's the matter with Norton Carr?"
Old Mrs. Parker closed her lips and wagged her head with a world of dark significance.
Mrs. Parker lowered her voice.
"He stimmylates," she said.
It was about the worst she could have said about poor Nort, except one thing—in Hempfield.
Anthy tried to draw her out still further, but not another word would she say. A long time afterward, when Anthy told me of this incident (how I have coveted the knowledge of every least thing in the lives of Nort and Anthy!), when she told me, she said reflectively: "I can't tell you how those words hurt me."
And then came the surprising telephone call from the old Captain, with the news that he had discharged Ed Smith!
It was characteristic of Anthy that when she put down the telephone receiver she was laughing. The tone of the Captain's voice and the picture she had of him, dramatically discharging Ed, were irresistible. But it was only for a moment, and the old problem of the Star leaped at her again. In the letters to Lincoln here in my desk I find that she referred to it repeatedly: "Ed Smith will not get on much longer with our vagabond, who isn't really a vagabond at all; and as for Uncle Newt, it seems to me that he grows more difficult every day. What shall I do?"