“Seems to me, Joe, that your clothes look a little seedy this morning,” Clara remarked, with a sister’s frankness, during a moment’s pause in the conversation. “The last time you came home you looked like a fashion plate. But now your shirt front is wrinkled, your collar is wilted, and the colors in your necktie have run together. Looks as though you’d got wet through and hadn’t dried out yet.”
“Perhaps they’ve been in the river,” laughed Mabel gaily, little thinking how near she came to hitting the nail on the head.
Mrs. Matson’s motherly heart was quick to take alarm.
“What’s that?” she asked. “Nothing really has happened to you, has it, Joe?” she inquired, looking anxiously at her son, who after one glare at the sister who had precipitated the topic, was trying to assume an air of nonchalance.
But this direct inquiry from his mother left him no recourse except to tell her a part of the truth, though not necessarily the whole truth.
“We did have a little spill this morning,” he returned indifferently. “I turned the car a little too much to the right and we went through a fence and into a little stream at the side of the road. Jim and I got wet, but after we got over being mad we had a good laugh over it. Neither one of us was a bit hurt, and it’s only our clothes that got the worst of it.”
“Oh, but you might have been killed!” exclaimed Mrs. Matson, clasping her hands together nervously. “You must be more careful, Joe. It would break my heart if anything happened to you.”
“Don’t worry a bit, Momsey,” replied Joe, placing his hand affectionately over hers. “Only the good die young, you know, and that makes me safe.”
They all pressed him for the details of the accident, and he and Jim both made light of it, making a joke out of their plight and their visit to the tailor, so that apprehension vanished, and after a while the matter was dropped.
Joe was eager for a chance to get alone with Mabel, and Jim was quite as keen for a tête-à-tête with Clara. The girls were quite as eager, but as there was no servant in the simple little household the girls flew around to clear the table, while Joe had a chance for a quiet talk with his mother, and Jim beguiled his impatience by going out on the porch with Mr. Matson for a smoke before the latter had to go downtown to business.