“How should I know? I don’t open his letters or telegrams.”
“Well, you’d ought to. Ten chances to one they’re from Ollie, asking for help or money or—Where is Oliver, if he ain’t at the store?”
“He’s out automobile riding with Mr. Lansing’s daughter.”
“Oh; he is, is he?” snapped Mr. Sikes, getting up. “I might have knowed it. Darn his eyes, he’s getting worse and worse every day. If I’ve warned that boy once about light women, I’ve done it a hundred times. He’s got to—”
“She’s letting it come in dark again,” said Mrs. Grimes calmly.
“Letting it what?”
“Come in dark. Her hair, I mean. She wouldn’t be any more of a blonde than you are, Joe Sikes, if she’d quit bleaching her hair, or hennering it, or whatever it is they do. Like Saul Higbee’s daughter Kate—you remember her, don’t you? Turned blonde over night, and said God had performed a miracle.”
“You mean to say this here Lansing woman ain’t a real blonde?” exclaimed Mr. Sikes, sitting down again.
“You heard what I said, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know whether to believe you or my own eyes.”