The blanket on the sofa heaved a little and Charles Tolliver changed his position, muttering at the same time, “What shall I say? What do you want me to say?” And then after a pregnant silence, “If Gramp is ranting around, I don’t see what we can do about it.”
He spoke thus of his father in the most natural fashion. It was as if the old man were something of a stranger to him, a vague figure entirely outside the circle of the family existence.
After another long silence, Mrs. Tolliver observed, “It’s nearly eleven o’clock and Ellen hasn’t come in yet.” Then she leaned forward to address her sons who lay sprawled on the floor, the older one reading as usual, the other lying on his back staring in his sulky way at the ceiling. “You boys must go to bed now. I’ll come up with you and see that you’re tucked in properly. It’s a cold night.”
The three departed and after a time, during which the hall clock sounded the hour of eleven, she descended from the neat upper regions and went into the kitchen to see that the door was locked, that the dog was on his mat, that the tap was not dripping, indeed, to oversee all the minutiæ of the household that were the very breath of her existence. When at last she reëntered the living room there was in her manner every evidence of agitation. She approached her husband and shook him from his comfortable oblivion.
“I don’t understand about Ellen,” she said. “It’s very late. Maybe you’d better go over to the Setons’ and see what has happened to her.”
But her spouse only groaned and muttered. “Wait a while.... Like as not she’s in bed asleep.”
“That couldn’t be ... not without my knowing it.”
What she would have done next was a matter for speculation, but before she had opportunity to act there rang through the silent house the sound of the doorbell being pushed violently and with annoying energy. It rang in a series of staccato periods, broken now and then with a single long and violent clamor. At the sound Mrs. Tolliver ran, and, as she approached the door, she cried out, “Yes!... Yes!... I’m coming. You needn’t wear out the battery!”
On opening it she discovered on the outside that source of all evil, Jimmy Seton. Even at sight of her he was unable to relinquish the pleasure of ringing the bell. Indeed he kept his hand upon the button until she knocked it loose by a sudden slap on the wrist.
“What do you mean by ringing like that?”