"I'd like to know what!"
"Truth. Justice. Honor. Right. Public welfare."
She waved them all away as wholly immaterial. "Hoh!"
With a kindness far too much like magnanimity to suit her, Hugh, drawing backward, smiled, and replied, not as pressing the argument but as dropping it:
"One can be against one's kin, yet not against them. Basile knows that. He proved it to-day."
"Basile—oh, Mr. Hugh, Basile wants to see you. Mom-a's sent me as much for you as for the twins. Basile's asked for you. But of course if your father——"
"I'll come, the moment I can be spared. Is your brother really better?"
Ramsey flinched as from pain. She leaned on the shoulder of the nurse—who had come close—and sadly shook her head. But then she straightened smilingly and said: "If you're coming at all——"
She might have finished but for a faint sound that reached her from directly underfoot, a sound of sawing. She faced sharply about, passed into the cabin, and found the Gilmores and the amateurs in the midst of their play.