The supper was good and well served, and they were soon chatting pleasantly together. Tom was especially attentive to Alice, the brunette, while Billy devoted himself to her blonde sister, Helen. Frank made himself generally agreeable, chatting with his hostess and occasionally addressing himself to the old man. The latter would arouse himself and make some reply which showed that he had not fully grasped what Frank had been saying. Then he would relapse into his moody muttering, and Frank, for fear of embarrassing him, finally left him to himself.
Suddenly something that Helen was saying to Billy caught Frank’s attention.
“Yes,” she remarked, “when we were living in Coblenz—”
“Coblenz!” ejaculated Billy. “Why that’s in Germany!”
“Certainly,” she replied in some wonderment. “Why, what of it?”
Frank caught a warning look that her mother directed at Helen.
CHAPTER XVIII
A PERPLEXING QUESTION
“Why, nothing,” stammered Billy, a trifle embarrassed. “I didn’t know that you had ever been in Germany.”
“Didn’t mother tell you?” asked Helen. “We lived in Coblenz for years.”
Here Mrs. Edsall intervened.