“It isn’t,” Herbert replied. “It is about my cousin, Fred Lansing. You have heard of him?”
Louie had heard of him, as a relation of whom Herbert was very proud, but in her excitement she cared to hear nothing more. She wanted to go home, she said; but Herbert pulled farther up the river toward a bed of white lilies, and kept talking to her of Fred and his Aunt Esther, who were coming, with a Miss Blanche Percy, to whom his Uncle Lansing had been guardian, and who lived with his aunt. This Miss Percy, he said, was born in Richmond, where his aunt lived before the war. She once had a twin brother, he had heard, who killed himself, or was killed, or something. They never talked about it. She was a great heiress, and his father would like him to marry her.
At this point Louie began to show a little interest, and looked up quickly, while he continued:
“But that’s absurd. She is as old as Fred, if not older. Boys don’t marry their grandmothers, do they?”
“I should think not,” Louie replied, and her head went up a little more squarely on her shoulders. “When are these fine folks coming?” she asked.
“Before long, I guess, and then there’ll be some grand times in town, you bet. I heard mother say once that if the Lansings ever came here she’d give a party which would astonish the natives. She’d have a brass band and a string band and a caterer and everything O. K., and have people from Worcester and Springfield, and only the very first in town.”
“Then I shall not be invited,” Louie said, with a snap in her voice corresponding to the snap in her eyes.
“Why not?” Herbert asked in surprise.
“Because you would not invite the daughter of a gambler to meet your fine friends, and that is what you said my father was,” Louie answered.
“I said nothing of the sort,” Herbert responded hotly. “I told of some hints I wanted to contradict. I am sorry I told you, and I know it isn’t true.”