"What a day!" she exclaimed. "It seems to get worse and worse. Positively you can't see across the street. It's like a western blizzard."
"It is, really," said Mrs. Carling; and then, moved by the current of thought which had been passing in her mind of late, "I fancy we shall spend the evening by ourselves to-night."
"That would not be so unusual as to be extraordinary, would it?" said Mary.
"Wouldn't it?" suggested Mrs. Carling in a tone that was meant to be slightly quizzical.
"We are by ourselves most evenings, are we not?" responded her sister, without turning around. "Why do you particularize to-night?"
"I was thinking," answered Mrs. Carling, bending a little closer over her work, "that even Mr. Lenox would hardly venture out in such a storm unless it were absolutely necessary."
"Oh, yes, to be sure, Mr. Lenox; very likely not," was Miss Blake's comment, in a tone of indifferent recollection.
"He comes here very often, almost every night, in fact," remarked Mrs. Carling, looking up sideways at her sister's back.
"Now that you mention it," said Mary dryly, "I have noticed something of the sort myself."
"Do you think he ought to?" asked her sister, after a moment of silence.