Once at home, Malcom and Margery gave their version of the affair to their mother.
"It isn't the first time she has looked like that at both Barbara and Betty," averred Malcom, emphatically, "and they have known and felt it, too."
"I am very sorry," said Mrs. Douglas, with a troubled look.
"Oh! you need not fear anything further, mother mia" said Malcom, sympathizingly. "Barbara will never show any more feeling. She would not have done it for herself, only for Betty. Under the circumstances she just had to fire her independence-gun, that is all. Now there will be perfect peace on her side. You know her.
"And," he added in an aside to Margery, as his mother was leaving the room, "Miss Sherman will not dare to be cross openly for fear of mother and Uncle Rob. I didn't dare to look at her. But wasn't it rich?" And he went off into a peal of laughter.
"It was only what she deserved, anyway," said Margery, who was usually most gentle in all her judgments.
It was quite a commentary on Mrs. Douglas's judgment of Lucile Sherman's character at this time, that she now deemed it best to tell her of Howard's bequest to Barbara, about which she had heretofore held silence.