Allan sat looking at Miss Betty absently. "Terribly hard on Celia,"—the words repeated themselves over and over in his mind.
"This is the first I ever heard of it," he said at length.
Miss Betty watched him as he walked away. "As usual I have been minding some one else's business," she said to herself; "but he ought to know it. Allan is a fine fellow."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIRST.
UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE.
"Must you then be proud and pitiless?"
The book containing the constitution of the Arden Foresters lay on the garden bench. The Foresters themselves were spending the afternoon at the creek at the foot of Red Hill. All was quiet in the neighborhood. The bank doors had closed two hours ago, and Friendship seemed to have retired for its afternoon nap.
Allan Whittredge unfolded the County News and glanced over it, then laid it on his knee and gazed across the lawn with a thoughtful frown. The County News presented no problems, but life in this quiet village of Friendship did. His talk with Miss Betty had brought him face to face with them. He was conscious now that his attitude had been one of complacent superiority. He had held himself above the pettiness of village life only to discover, as he admitted frankly, that he had been a conceited fool.
His own indignation helped him to realize something of what Celia must have felt at the cruel affront to her father. And his silence all this while made him seem a party to it. It was an intolerable thought, but Allan was not one to brood over difficulties; a gleam of what Miss Betty called the Barnwell stubbornness shone in his eyes as he made an inward vow to find some way to convince Celia of his ignorance of much which had happened at the time of his father's death, and to gain from his mother an admission of her mistake. The question how to accomplish this, filled him with a helpless impatience.