"Prentiss McMakin came to me that day," she was saying, "with an appeal—I hardly know how to tell you." She broke off.
"Go ahead, Lucy," says Colonel Tom's voice.
"He was insulting," she said. "He had been drinking. He wanted me to—to—he appealed to me to run off with him.
"I was furious—NATURALLY." Her voice changed as she said it enough so you could feel how furious Miss Lucy could get. She was like her brother Tom in some ways.
"I ordered him out of the house. His answer to that was an offer to marry me. You can imagine that I was surprised as well as angry—I was perplexed.
"'But I AM married!' I cried. The idea that any of my own people, or any one whom I had known at home, would think I wasn't married was too much for me to take in all at once.
"'You THINK you are,' said Prentiss McMakin, with a smile.
"In spite of myself my breath stopped. It was as if a chilly hand had taken hold of my heart. I mean, physically, I felt like that.
"'I AM married,' I repeated, simply.
"I suppose that McMakin had got the story of our wedding from YOU." She stopped a minute. The doctor's voice answered: