“You didn't ask them?”
“Not all, only a few, but they wouldn't.”
“I'd like to know why not?”
Then Henry spoke. “Sylvia,” he said, “Mr. Allen is only joking.”
“I hope he is,” Sylvia said, severely. “He's too young to think of getting married. It makes me sick, though, to see the way girls chase any man, and their mothers, too, for that matter. Mrs. Jim Jones and Mrs. Sam Elliot both came while you were gone, Mr. Allen. They said they thought maybe we wouldn't take a boarder now we have come into property, and maybe you would like to go there, and I knew just as well as if they had spoken what they had in their minds. There's Minnie Jones as homely as a broom, and there's Carrie Elliot getting older, and—”
“Sylvia!” said Henry.
“I don't care. Mr. Allen knows what's going on just as well as I do. Neither of those women can cook fit for a cat to eat, let alone anything else. Lucy Ayres came here twice on errands, too, and—”
But Horace colored, and spoke suddenly. “I didn't know that you would take me back,” he said. “I was afraid—”
“We don't need to, as far as money goes,” said Sylvia, “but Mr. Whitman and I like to have the company, and you never make a mite of trouble. That's what I told Mrs. Jim Jones and Mrs. Sam Elliot.”
“I'm glad he's got back,” Henry said, after Horace had gone up-stairs for the night and the couple were in their own room, a large one out of the sitting-room.