“Is Marian to be here?” asked Linda as she stood beside the stove peering into pans and kettles.
“Miss Eileen didn’t say,” replied Katy.
Linda’s eyes reddened suddenly. She slammed down a lid with vicious emphasis.
“That is another deal Eileen’s engineered,” she said, “that is just about as wrong as anything possibly can be. What makes me the maddest about it is that John Gilman will let Eileen take him by the nose and lead him around like a ringed calf. Where is his common sense? Where is his perception? Where is his honour?”
“Now wait, dearie,” said Katy soothingly, “wait. John Gilman is a mighty fine man. Ye know how your father loved him and trusted him and gave him charge of all his business affairs. Ye mustn’t go so far as to be insinuating that he is lacking in honour.”
“No,” said Linda, “that was not fair. I don’t in the least know that he ever asked Marian to marry him; but I do know that as long as he was a struggling, threadbare young lawyer Marian was welcome to him, and they had grand times together. The minute he won the big Bailey suit and came into public notice and his practice increased until he was independent, that minute Eileen began to take notice, and it looks to me now as if she very nearly had him.”
“And so far as I can see,” said Katy, “Miss Marian is taking it without a struggle. She is not lifting a finger or making a move to win him back.”
“Of course she isn’t!” said Linda indignantly. “If she thought he preferred some other girl to her, she would merely say: ‘If John has discovered that he likes Eileen the better, why, that is all right’; but there wouldn’t be anything to prevent seeing Eileen take John from hurting like the deuce. Did you ever lose a man you loved, Katy?”
“That I did not!” said Katy emphatically. “We didn’t do any four or five years’ philanderin’ to see if a man ‘could make good’ when I was a youngster. When a girl and her laddie stood up to each other and looked each other straight in the eye and had the great understanding, there weren’t no question of whether he could do for her what her father and mither had been doing, nor of how much he had to earn before they would be able to begin life together. They just caught hands and hot-footed it to the praste and told him to read the banns the next Sunday, and when the law allowed they was man and wife and taking what life had for them the way it came, and together. All this philanderin’ that young folks do nowadays is just pure nonsense, and waste of time.”
“Sure!” laughed Linda. “When my brave comes along with his blanket I’ll just step under, and then if anybody tries to take my man I’ll have the right to go on the warpath and have a scalping party that would be some satisfaction to the soul.”