"Judge Blodgett," said Doctor Brown, "told a friend of mine that he had known Brassfield from infancy."
"The first light Bellevale has ever received on a dark past," said Miss Finch, "if it is light. And how strangely he acts! Everybody notices it. Always so chatty and almost voluble before, and now—why, he's dreadfully boorish. You know how he treated you, Miss Brown!"
"Yes, and he knows how I treated him for it!" said Doctor Brown. "I propose to call people down when they act so with me!"
"Quite right," said Mrs. Alvord, "quite correct, Doctor. Oh, what a change! And who has changed for the worse lately more than Bessie Waldron? Pale, silent and clearly unhappy. I can't attach any importance to that affair of the strange woman with the striped hair; but that Miss Scarlett matter—that's quite different. Jim and I saw the beginning of that up in the mountains last summer. Daisy Scarlett is a queer girl, so wild and hoidenish—but the people who know her in Allentown just think the world of her, the same as do the people in Bellevale—and her appearance here right after the announcement of the engagement means something. Poor Bess! Hush! There she comes. Oh, Bessie, it's so sweet of you to come, even if you are late! Everybody has been saying such sweet things of you!"
"How kind of them!" said Elizabeth. "Has Parsifal received any attention?"
At the club, of course, no such gossip as that uttered at the meeting of the Society for Ethical Research was heard. Men are above such things. To be sure Alvord and Slater and Edgington and the rest of the "the gang" did exchange views on some matters involving the welfare of the club—and in the course of duty.
"I tell you," said Slater, "Brass has been practising that French doctrine about hunting for the woman—a little too industriously. They're getting to be something—something——"
"Fierce," suggested Alvord.
"Well, that isn't quite what I meant to say," said Slater, "but pretty near. 'Terrible as an army with banners,' you know, and condemned near as numerous."
"It's changed Brassfield like a coat of paint, this engagement," said Edgington. "I saw something last week that showed me more than you could print in a book as big as the Annual Digest. You see, he went sort of gravitating down by where the sewer gang was at work, like a man in a strange country full of hostiles, and although he must have been conscious of the fact that he's slated for mayor in the spring, he never showed that he knew of the presence of a human being, to say nothing of a voter, in the whole gang, and Barney Conlon's gang, too. Why, he'd better have done anything than ignore 'em! He'd better a darn sight have stood and sung Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill! as a political move. Now that shows a revolution in his nature. It's uncanny, and it'll play the very deuce with the slate if it goes on."