Dorothea said it virtuously, and licked her lips to hide the jelly she had been eating out of a new tumbler she had just opened.
Darcy Sherwood! What had Darcy Sherwood to do with Joyce? Could that have been Darcy’s voice over the phone that morning?
Eugene was silent and thoughtful during their walk to Judge Peterson’s and strode so fast that Nannette could scarcely keep pace with him. As they waited after ringing the old-fashioned door bell he looked down frowning and admonished his wife:
“Now, don’t you be a fool and spill the beans.”
They were ushered into the Judge’s room where he lay propped up by pillows in a great old sleigh bed, with his wife on one side fanning him gently, and his son sitting by the window with some papers in his hands, but as soon as they were seated the Judge’s eyes looked toward the door restlessly, and his big voice which had lost none of its brusqueness with his illness, although it quavered a little with weakness, asked:
“Where’s Joyce? Didn’t you bring the little girl?”
Nannette looked frightened and turned toward her husband to take the initiative and Eugene hastened to explain that Joyce hadn’t been feeling well since the funeral and they had sent her away on a little trip to relatives to get rested after the shock of her aunt’s death.
The kind, rugged old face looked disappointed, and his head sank back a little farther on the pillows:
“H’m! Then there’s nothing doing,” he said as if the matter were finished, “Dan, I thought I told you to tell ’em it was no use their coming without Joyce.”
“I did, Father. I thought I made it plain.”