“I’m wondering if you’ve found him always truthful?”
Mrs. Gentrie said somewhat defiantly, “Junior is a good boy.”
“Of course he is,” Tragg said. “But I am asking you if you have found him entirely truthful.”
Rebecca, who had been squirming uneasily on her chair, anxious for an excuse to enter the conversation, said, “Of course, Florence, you must admit that since he’s started going...”
Florence turned to her. “Please, Rebecca,” she said.
Tragg was apologetic, but insistent. “This is rather embarrassing to me,” he said, “but I think your sister-in-law was commenting on the exact phase that I wanted to bring up, Mrs. Gentrie.” He turned to Rebecca. “You were going to say that since he became interested in that stenographer next door, he’s been a little secretive, weren’t you?”
Rebecca sniffed. “Secretive’s no name for it. There’s no good going to come of it, if you ask me. A young boy like him running around with a woman that’s so much older. They certainly didn’t do anything like that when I was a girl.”
Mrs. Gentrie said doggedly, “Rebecca, I think it would be better if you left Junior out of it.”
Rebecca said, “It isn’t anything against Junior as much as it is against that little minx. She has that butter-won’t-melt-in-my-mouth manner of looking at you. And she says” — and here Rebecca’s voice changed entirely to assume a startling likeness to that of Opal Sunley — “ ‘Good mo ahning, Miss Gentrie — ahnd how’s all the fahmily today?’ I feel like up and giving her a piece of my mind, just coming right out and saying, ‘They’d be very well, thank you, if you’d just leave your painted finger hooks out of Junior and let him grow up as a normal boy should.’ ”
Mrs. Gentrie said sternly, “Rebecca! Stop it!”