There was another interval of silence, and then starting quickly, Rose called out, “Mother, don’t you remember that affair of Jimmie’s ever so long ago, when he was a boy at school in New London? There was a little girl that he fancied, and you took him home for fear of what would come of it; when you found she was poor and nobody?”
Glancing quickly at Annie, who was attentively examining the hem-stitch of the fine linen pillow-case, Mrs. Carleton said, reprovingly:
“You should not parade our family matters before strangers, my daughter.”
“Oh, Annie is no stranger,” Rose answered, laughingly. “She’s one of our folks now, besides, she is not enough interested in the love affair of a seventeen years old boy ever to repeat it.”
“Love affair!” Mrs. Carleton rejoined, a little scornfully. “Not very much love about it, I imagine. She was stopping with her aunt at the Pequot House, and Jimmie saw her a few times, passing himself off by another name than his own. If he had cared for this child he would never have done that.”
“He seems to have a penchant for assuming names,” Rose rejoined, playfully. “He called himself John Brown, at Washington, while to this little Pequot girl he was, let me see, what was it? Can’t you think, mother?”
Rose was bent on talking about Jimmie and his Pequot girl, and knowing that she could not stop her, Mrs. Carleton replied:
“Richard Lee, or something like that.”
“Oh, yes, ‘Dick!’ I remember now; and her name was,—what was it, mother? It makes my head ache so trying to recall it.”
“If I ever knew, I’ve forgotten,” Mrs. Carleton said, and after trying in vain to think, Rose dismissed the name, but not the subject.