CHAPTER XXV
The whole connection seethed! The notoriety of Flora's death was nothing compared with this notoriety. The police court! The newspapers! The gossip of Mrs. Childs's Bridge Club! And, on top of everything else, the shock to Laura.
"You see," Mrs. Payton explained to her daughter, "she's going to have a baby, and—"
"I know," Fred said, soberly; "she told me. Of course I wouldn't have let her go, if I'd known there was going to be rough-house."
"It's absurd to blame you," her mother said. "As I told your Aunt Bessie, 'It's absurd to blame Freddy!'"
"I don't mind being blamed. I oughtn't to have taken her, anyhow. She doesn't really care for the things I care for. She's entirely under Howard's thumb, poor dear!"
Mr. William Childs was almost sick with anger, and Mrs. Childs, with her calm interest in other people's troubles, agreed with Miss Mary Graham, who said that, of course, Miss Freddy meant well; but sometimes the brain defect didn't show at once, as it did in her brother. "It comes on when they are about twenty-five," said Miss Mary.
Mrs. Childs said that was the most charitable way to look at it, and—amiably ready to tell anything to anybody—repeated the charitable opinion to Mrs. Payton.
"What did the older one say?" Fred's mother asked, distractedly.