Maria shook her head, smiling hopefully. "Not too bad a mess to straighten out, dear," she answered. "We must set to work at once and begin to mend matters. Ah, if you had only written me how things were!"
"What was the use?" asked Will doggedly. "It was all grandpa—he turned out the devil himself, and there was no putting up with him. He'll live forever, too; that's the worst of it!"
"But you did anger him very much, Will—and you might so easily have waited. Surely, you were both young enough."
"Oh, it wasn't all about Molly, you know, when it comes to that. Long before I married he had made my life a burden to me. It all began with his insane jealousy of Christopher Blake—"
"Of Christopher Blake?" repeated Maria, and fell a step away from him.
"Blake has been a deuced good friend to me," insisted Will; "that's what the old man hates—what he's hated steadily all along. The whole trouble started when I wouldn't choose my friends to please him; and when at last I undertook to pick out my own wife there was hell to pay."
Maria's gaze wandered inquiringly in the direction of the house, which had a disordered and thriftless air.
"Is she here?" she asked, not without a slight nervousness in her voice.
Will followed her glance, and, taking off his big straw hat, pulled at the shoestring tied tightly around the crown.
"Not now; but you'll see her some day, when she's dressed up, and I tell you she'll be worth your looking at. All she needs is a little money to turn her into the most tearing beauty you ever saw."