"Who does she go with?" I said.
"Oh, there are several. A man named Carisbrook——" I'd seen him often, a swell guy in white spats and a high hat—"and a young lawyer called Dunham and Ben Robinson, a Canadian like me. People see her with them and tell the doctor and there's a row."
I looked into the box as careful as if I was searching for a diamond.
"Ain't Mr. Reddy one of the happy family?" I asked. "Ah, here's the last almond!"
"Oh, of course, young Reddy. I think it would be a good thing if she married him. Everybody says he's a fine fellow, and I tell you now, Molly, with Sylvia so willful and the doctor so domineering and Mrs. Fowler being pulled to pieces between them, things at Mapleshade can't go on long the way they are."
That was in May. At the end of June the Fowlers went to Bar Harbor with all their outfit for the summer. After that Jack Reddy didn't come into Longwood much. I heard that he was spending a good deal of his time at the bungalow at Hochalaga Lake, and I did see him a few times meeting his company at the train—he had some week-end parties out there—and bringing them back in the gray car.
At the end of September the Fowlers came home. It was great weather, clear and crisp, with the feel of frost in the air. Most everybody was out of doors and I saw Sylvia often, sometimes on horseback, sometimes driving her motor. She was prettier than ever for the change and seemed like she couldn't stay in the house. I'd see her riding toward home in the red light of the sunset, and as I walked back from work her car often would flash past me, speeding through the early dark toward Maple Lane.
Anne said they'd had a fairly peaceful summer and she hoped they were going to get on better. There had only been one row—that was about a man who was up at Bar Harbor and had met Sylvia and paid her a good deal of attention. The Doctor had been very angry as he disapproved of the man—Cokesbury was his name.
"Cokesbury!" I cut in surprised—we were in Anne's room that evening—"why, he belongs round here."
Anne had heard that and wanted to know what I knew about him, which I'll write down in this place as it seems to fit in and has to be told somewhere.