“You have no basis for such a statement,” I said sternly. But he only took another wafer and more of our cordial. He was preventing a cold.
“All right,” he said. “But I’ve had considerable experience, and she’s too quiet. Besides, she asked me the other day if doubtful methods were justifiable to attain a righteous end!”
“What did you tell her?” Aggie inquired anxiously.
“I said they were not; but she didn’t seem to believe me. Now mark my words: After every spell of quiet she has she goes out and gets in the papers. So don’t say I haven’t warned you.”
But he had no real basis for his unjust suspicions, and after eating all the nut wafers in the house he went away.
“Just one thing,” he said: “I was around there yesterday, and her place looked queer to me. I missed a lot of little things she used to have. You don’t suppose she’s selling them, do you?”
Well, Tish has plenty of money and that seemed unlikely. But Aggie and I went around that evening, and it was certainly true. Her Cousin Mary Evans’ blue vases were gone from the mantel of the living room, and her Grandaunt Priscilla’s portrait was missing from over the fireplace. The china clock with wild roses on it that Aggie had painted herself had disappeared, and Tish herself had another attack of neuritis and had her right arm hung in a sling.
She was very noncommital when I commented on the bareness of the room.
“I’m sick of being cluttered up with truck,” she said. “We surround our bodies with too many things, and cramp them. The human body is divine and beautiful, but we surround it with—er—china clocks and what not, and it deteriorates.”
“Surround it with clothes, Tish,” I suggested, but she waved me off.