“You're right, Pansy Blossom. But the difference between you and me is that I know I can't.... Hey? Why, yes, Martha, I shouldn't be a bit surprised if the fog came in any time. If it does that means I've got to tend foghorn as well as light. Godfreys!”
Before they opened the side door of the Hallett home, the buzz of voices in the parlor was distinctly audible. Lulie heard the door open and met them in the dining room. She was looking anxious and disturbed. Martha drew her aside and questioned her concerning her father. Lulie glanced toward the parlor door and then whispered:
“I don't know, Martha. Father seems queer to-night, awfully queer. I can't make him out.”
“Queer? In what way? He is always nervous and worked up before these silly affairs, isn't he?”
“Yes, but I don't mean that, exactly. He has been that way for over a week. But for the last two days he has been—well, different. He seems to be troubled and—and suspicious.”
“Suspicious? Suspicious of what?”
“I don't know. Of every one.”
“Humph! Well, if he would only begin to get suspicious of Marietta and her spirit chasers I should feel like givin' three cheers. But I suppose those are exactly the ones he isn't suspicious of.”
Lulie again glanced toward the parlor door.
“I am not so sure,” she said. “It seemed to me that he wasn't as cordial to them as usual when they came to-night. He keeps looking at Marietta and pulling his beard and scowling, the way he does when he is puzzled and troubled. I'm not sure, but I think something came in the mail yesterday noon and another something again to-day which may be the cause of his acting so strangely. I don't know what they were, he wouldn't answer when I asked him, but I saw him reading a good deal yesterday afternoon. And then he came into the kitchen where I was, took the lid off the cookstove and put a bundle of printed pages on the fire. I asked him what he was doing and he snapped at me that he was burning the words of Satan or something of that sort.”