“Who?” asked the young fellow, eagerly.
Anderson hesitated.
“Who did you think it was?” Eastman persisted. He had a pitiful wistfulness in his face upturned to the older man. It became quite evident that he had a desire to hear himself named as the accepted suitor.
“Why, I thought that you were the man!” Anderson answered.
“Everybody thought so, I guess,” the young fellow said, with an absurd and childlike pride in the semblance in the midst of his grief over the reality. “But—” He hesitated, and Anderson waited, looking above at the play of lightning in the sky and smoking. “She's gone and got engaged to a man old enough to be her father. Lord! I guess he's older than her father—old enough to be her grandfather!” cried the young fellow, with a burst of grief and rage and shame. “Yes, sir, old enough to be her grandfather,” he repeated. His voice shook. His cigar had gone out. He struck a match and the head flew off. He swore softly and struck another. Sometimes a match refusing to ignite changes mourning to wrath and rebellion. The third match broke short in two and the burning head flew down on the sidewalk. “Wish I had hold of the man that made 'em,” young Eastman said, viciously; and in the same breath: “What can the girl be thinking of, that she flings herself away like that? Hang it all, is a woman a devil or a fool?”
Anderson removed his cigar long enough to ask a question, then replaced it. “Who is the man?” he inquired, in a slow, odd voice.
“Oh, he is an old army officer, a major—Major Arms, I believe his name is. He's somebody they've known a long time. He lives in Kentucky, I believe, in the same place where the Carrolls used to live and where she went to school. Oh, it's a good match. They're just tickled to death over it. Her sister feels rather bad, I guess, but, Lord! she'd do the same thing herself, if she got the chance. They're all alike.” The boy said the last with a cynical bitterness beyond his years. He sneered effectively. He crossed one leg over the other and puffed his relighted cigar. The last match had ignited. Anderson said nothing. He was accommodating his ideas to the change of situation. Presently young Eastman spoke again. “Well,” he said, in a tone of wretched conceit, “girls are as thick as flowers, after all, and a lot alike. Bessy Van Dorn is a beauty, isn't she?”
“I don't think she's much like the other,” said Anderson, shortly.
“She's full as pretty.”
Anderson made no reply.