“Syd is right. It would be brutality—sheer vandalism.”
“You precious treasure. He told me that was what you would say. Now I am going to the office to tell my darling daddy that he is to have a real son-in-law.”
“When are you going to tell your mother, dear?”
“That’s Syd’s job. He is going to make formal application for my hand. He can get off a thing like that, without batting an eye, when he’s just dying to get out and yell. And the worst of it is, mamma’ll take it in dead earnest. I suppose Sylvia will have sarcastic things to say. I don’t care. Syd never was really in love with her—after he was old enough to cut his eye teeth.”
IV
Mrs. Penrose did not come home for the wedding. Just what she wrote her mother, the other members of the family never knew. Her letter came with another, which bore the Bromfield postmark, and the two were on Lavinia’s plate when she came down to breakfast. David and the girls were already at the table, and Theo had inspected the mail. Drusilla had been instructed not to take letters from the box, and the sight of two thick envelopes threw Lavinia into a nervous chill. She picked them up and carried them to the sun room, saying she had a headache and would eat nothing.
After a little, David followed her, distressed. “Is there anything wrong in Bromfield—at your brother’s house, or with my people?”
“There’s nothing the matter in Bromfield. Sylvia is a cat!”