"Do stop talking nonsense, Jack, and tell me more about Suzanne."
Sylvia's voice had a faint edge of sharpness to it as if a little of the grim December wind outside had gotten into it.
"I don't know any more. I've told you all that is generally published. Even Norton, Pa., gropes in middle darkness. She didn't even write to Roger it seems. He is in bad. Had the temerity to propose to her again just after she had emerged with a bundle of manuscripts from a manager's office, which wasn't a tactful moment, I gather. She consigned him to the devil or some feminine equivalent thereof, apparently. Pa and Ma knows she's traveling. Had cards from Buffalo and Cleveland, I understand. Pa's excited and Ma's took to her bed. Looks as if they feared the worst."
"Jack!"
"Sorry. I was only joking, of course. Trust Suzanne to take care of herself. She is all right. Roger is having a fit or two though, and no wonder."
"Serves him right. Why didn't he go and marry her and not let her go off on a tangent like that?"
"Why, indeed?" murmured Jack. "It is so hanged easy to marry a girl when she won't have you! Give me the good old cave days. You could knock your bride down with a club if she objected. Then, when she came to, she would get up and grin at her noble master and string some red berries round her neck, or stick a ring in her nose, to enhance her charms, and everything would be entirely agreeable."
"Jack, you are perfectly horrid to-day. I wish you had stayed in New York. How is Jeanette?" Sylvia changed the subject severely.
"Going the pace, as usual. Good Lord, Sylvia, what do you suppose a woman wants to live the kind of life she's elected for? I like a good time myself. It's a family trait. But she goes as if all the devils of Hell were loose and after her. Maybe they are, after a fashion. See here, Sylvia, aren't you going up to see her soon?"
"After Christmas. Why?"