“Do stop!” cried Alexia, picking off her boy from the bed to go after her and pluck her by the sleeve. “Hush, hush—Bonny will hear. And besides, it can’t ever be—no, never in all this world, I tell you; so what’s the use of hopping so.”
“Can’t ever be?” asked Grace, coming to such a dead stop that she nearly overturned Alexia, baby and all. “Didn’t you say, Mrs. Dodge, that they loved each other?”
“Yes; oh, dreadfully!” said Alexia, backing up against the wall; “but it won’t ever be that they will be married, because Grandpapa King don’t want Phronsie to be married.”
“He don’t want Miss Phronsie to be married when she loves somebody?” gasped Grace.
“Oh, well! he doesn’t exactly believe that she does love him,” said Alexia testily, who had privately berated him so many times when talking it all over with Pickering that she was now sore on the subject, “and he wants her to himself.”
Grace Tupper sat down on the first thing that she could see, which proved to be the scrap-basket. “Doesn’t old Mr. King love Miss Phronsie?” she gasped.
“Yes, yes,” gasped Alexia, running to pull at her; “but get out of that scrap-basket. Polly Pepper made that for me years ago, and you are mussing all the ribbons.” And calling to Bonny, who came without a ripple on her placid countenance, she bundled the baby into her arms, and began to pull out the big pink bows from which Grace gave a bound.
“I’ll tell you all about it, and then you must tell me all about it,” she said, when the pink bows were found not to be much crushed after all. “There, come over here to the sofa. It’s a mercy that you didn’t ruin that basket. If you had, I’d never have forgiven you, Grace Tupper, in all this world. Well, you see, it all happened three years ago when they were abroad,—Phronsie and Grandpapa King and David, and the Fishers and Charlotte Chatterton,—there was a perfect mob of them; Charlotte was just going over to begin to study in Germany. And although Polly and Jasper heard something of it in Mother Fisher’s letters, it wasn’t till they all got home that we knew how it was. And then Roslyn May came over twice to see her. And then the most awful thing, Grace Tupper, in all this world, you can’t think,” she leaned her elbows on her knees and regarded Grace fixedly, “happened, and I’ve been worried to death about it ever since.”
“What?” Grace scarcely breathed it, while her large blue eyes dilated fearfully.
“Why, Roslyn May came across just a few weeks ago,” said Alexia in a stage whisper, “actually came to this side of the Atlantic, and didn’t come to see Phronsie! And I think—I really and truly do, Grace Tupper—that Grandpapa King had something to do about it; for Roslyn May didn’t stay but one day. What do you think of that?”