“Which do you think?” asked Rhoda calmly.
Charlotte leaned forward, all eagerness, her intuitions, as they so often did, flashing straight to the truth. “Not John Brown?” she ejaculated. Rhoda nodded, and Charlotte drew back with a little gasp and then seized the cat in her lap with extravagant exclamations of pride and affection.
“My precious Bully Brooks! You knew who he was, didn’t you, and you told him what you thought of him! He’s a regular old ogre, Rhoda, and Bully Brooks felt it, didn’t you, you darling cat! And you shall go with Charlotte, when she’s married, to Corey’s Hall, so you shall, where there won’t be any nigger-stealers to make you angry.”
Rhoda looked on with amusement. Not even yet, although Charlotte’s wedding day was fast approaching, could she think of her sister as other than a merry sprite, a spoiled child, of whom it would be too much to expect the sense of ordinary responsibilities. But now a feeling of uneasiness grew upon her, and when presently both rose to go into the house she said:
“By the way, sister, please remember that it is not necessary for you to tell any one about Captain Brown’s being here, either now or after he has gone.”
Charlotte tilted her chin saucily and laughed. “Don’t you know, Rhoda, that I never make promises—except for the fun of breaking them? Besides, I’m a southerner now.”
Rhoda laid her hand gently upon the other’s shoulder. “Stop, sister. This is a serious matter. I can’t forget that once you played the traitor—pardon me, there is no other word for it, although I don’t think you meant it that way—but it was the traitor to father and to me. You know how much father loves you and how he’ll miss you after you’re married. Do you want to make him feel so much safer then that he can’t help being glad you’re gone?”
It was a new experience for even Rhoda to take her reckless audacities with so much seriousness, and she looked up wonderingly, at first with pouting and then with trembling lips. “I don’t see why you want to make me so unhappy at home, when I’m soon going to leave it,” she sobbed. “Do you want to make me hate my home and be glad to go away?”
Rhoda longed to take the dainty, drooping little figure into her arms and speak words of soothing. But she held to her purpose. “Do you want to make father, who loves you so much, glad to have you go away?”
Charlotte stamped her foot. “Of course I don’t!” she exclaimed, her fists in her eyes. “And you’re perfectly horrid to say such things!”