“Gracious!” Delia panted.
“Is it pleasant at Nice? Is it very gay? Isn’t it very hot now?” Francie rather limply asked.
“Oh it’s all right. But I haven’t come up here to crow about Nice, have I?”
“Why not, if we want you to?”—Delia spoke up.
Mr. Flack looked at her for a moment very hard, in the whites of the eyes; then he replied, turning back to her sister: “Anything YOU like, Miss Francie. With you one subject’s as good as another. Can’t we sit down? Can’t we be comfortable?” he added.
“Comfortable? of course we can!” cried Delia, but she remained erect while Francie sank upon the sofa again and their companion took possession of the nearest chair.
“Do you remember what I told you once, that the people WILL have the plums?” George Flack asked with a hard buoyancy of the younger girl.
She looked an instant as if she were trying to recollect what he had told her; and then said, more remotely, “DID father write to you?”
“Of course he did. That’s why I’m here.”
“Poor father, sometimes he doesn’t know WHAT to do!” Delia threw in with violence.