“But wait—but listen,” said Hosmer, “ ‘Natural History and all that—and we’re going to take that magnificent trip through the West—the Yosemite and so forth. It appears the flora of California is especially interesting and we’re to carry those delicious little tin boxes strapped over our shoulders to hold specimens. Her son and daughter are both, in their way, striking. He isn’t handsome; rather the contrary; but so serene and collected—so intensely bitter—his mother tells me he’s a pessimist. And the daughter really puts me to shame, child as she is, with the amount of her knowledge. She labels all her mother’s specimens in Latin. Oh, I feel there’s so much to be learned. Mrs. Griesmann thinks I ought to wear glasses during the trip. Says we often require them without knowing it ourselves—that they are so restful. She has some theory about it. I’m trying a pair, and see a great deal better through them than I expected to. Only they don’t hold on very well, especially when I laugh.
“ ‘Who do you suppose seized on to me in Vandervoort’s the other day, but that impertinent Mrs. Belle Worthington! Positively took me by the coat and commenced to gush about dear sister Thérèse. She said: “I tell you what, my dear—” called me my dear at the highest pitch, and that odious Mrs. Van Wycke behind us listening and pretending to examine a lace handkerchief. “That Mrs. Lafirme’s a trump,” she said—“too good for most any man. Hope you won’t take offense, but I must say, your brother David’s a perfect stick—it’s what I always said.” Can you conceive of such shocking impertinence?’
“Well; Belle Worthington does possess the virtue of candor,” said Hosmer amused and folding the letter. “That’s about all there is, except a piece of scandal concerning people you don’t know; that wouldn’t interest you.”
“But it would interest me,” Thérèse insisted, with a little wifely resentment that her husband should have a knowledge of people that excluded her.
“Then you shall hear it,” he said, turning to the letter again. “Let’s see—‘conceive—shocking impertinence—’ oh, here it is.
“ ‘Don’t know if you have learned the horrible scandal; too dreadful to talk about. I shall send you the paper. I always knew that Lou Dawson was a perfidious creature—and Bert Rodney! You never did like him, David; but he was always so much the gentleman in his manners—you must admit that. Who could have dreamed it of him. Poor Mrs. Rodney is after all the one to be pitied. She is utterly prostrated. Refuses to see even her most intimate friends. It all came of those two vile wretches thinking Jack Dawson out of town when he wasn’t; for he was right there following them around in their perambulations. And the outcome is that Mr. Rodney has his beauty spoiled they say forever; the shot came very near being fatal. But poor, poor Mrs. Rodney!
“ ‘Well, good-bye, you dearest David mine. How I wish you both knew Mrs. Griesmann. Give that sweet sister Thérèse as many kisses as she will stand for me.
Melicent.’ ”
This time Hosmer put the letter into his pocket, and Thérèse asked with a little puzzled air: “What do you suppose is going to become of Melicent, anyway, David?”
“I don’t know, love, unless she marries my friend Homeyer.”