The sun that had given some warmth to the early hours of the afternoon was dimmed, later, by an overcasting of thin clouds, and the rest of the time was passed in-doors. George smoked a friendly cigar with Bradley in the dining-room, and after Mrs. Bradley had disappeared for a short nap he whiled away the remaining hours with Jessie in the parlor. They sat in two easy-chairs on opposite sides of the fireplace, in which a handful of coal was working against the last lingering chill of winter. The girl had partly recovered her earlier tone, and she chatted with him in a-string of smart jocularities with the manner which sometimes assures a doubtful caller that he has not made a mistake in coming and that he has not remained too long after coming. But between these uptilted strata of facetiousness there came now and then a layer of greater seriousness, and in one of these intervals she trenched on the domestic affairs of the Brainards.
"Poor Mayme went South the other day, didn't she? I hardly suppose you could call it a visit?" She looked at him soberly, with her eyebrows slightly raised.
George winced. "To visit her uncle's family," he answered. He half wondered why he reiterated her word and even emphasized it.
"Her sister was going to run down there with her."
"I heard so."
"You see Abbie occasionally?"
"Occasionally."
"I suppose she is at the bank a good deal?"
"Not often." He fixed his eye on the last Bickerings of the coals and lapsed into silence. It was not so easy now as once before to discuss Abbie Brainard with Jessie Bradley.
Mrs. Bradley came in brisk and refreshed about half an hour before train-time. The young people were chatting amusedly enough on indifferent subjects, and she urged Ogden to stay to tea with the clinging insistency of the suburban housekeeper.