XIX
When Sylvie returned from Storisende, she had Flora with her. Conn's sister greeted him embarrassedly; Sylvie led both of them out of the crowd and over to the edge of the excavation.
"Go ahead, Flora," she urged. "Make up with Conn. It won't be any harder than making up with Wade was."
"How did that happen, by the way?" Conn asked.
"Your girlfriend," Flora said. "She came to the house and practically forced me into a car and flew me into Storisende, and then made me keep quiet and listen while Wade told me the truth."
"I wasn't completely sure what the truth was myself till Wade opened up," Sylvie admitted. "I had a pretty good idea, though."
"I always hated that Merlin thing," Flora burst out. "All those old men in Fawzi's office, dreaming about the wonderful things Merlin was going to do, with everything crumbling around them and everybody getting poorer every year, and doing nothing, nothing! And when you were coming home, I was expecting you to tell them there was no Merlin and to go to work and do something for themselves. But you didn't, and I couldn't see what you were trying to do. And then when Wade joined you and Father, I thought he was either helping you put over some kind of a swindle or else he'd started believing in Merlin himself. I should have seen what you were trying to do from the beginning. At least, from when you talked them into cleaning the town up and fixing the escalators and getting the fountains going again."
So the fountains weren't dusty any more.
"How's Mother taking things now?"