"Thunder!" Amzi ejaculated. "Josie's broke like the rest of 'em. Alec has a weakness for gold mines. That's cost a heap, and he doesn't earn enough practicing law to pay for the ice in Josie's ice-box. Fosdick lives up in the air—away up, clean out of sight. I figure that as a floorwalker in a department store Hastings would be worth about twelve dollars a week; and Fosdick might succeed as barker for a five-legged calf in a side-show; but Alec's place in the divine economy is something I have never placed, and I defy any man to place it!"
Amzi was enjoying himself. It was with real zest that he hit off his brothers-in-law to this sister, who afforded him an outlet for long-stifled emotions. He had been honestly loyal to the three homekeeping sisters and to their husbands also for that matter; and the fact that he could at last let himself go deepened his sense of the sympathy and the understanding that had always existed between him and Lois. He hated fuss; and his other sisters were tiresomely fussy and maddeningly disingenuous. In half an hour Lois had learned all she cared to know of the family history. She merely dipped into the bin, brought up a handful of wheat, blew away the chaff, eyed the remaining kernels with a sophisticated eye, and tossed them over her shoulder.
"As near as I can make out they're all broke; is that about it?"
"Just about," Amzi replied. "They haven't mortgaged their homes yet, but if Mrs. Bill Holton turns up with a new automobile next spring or gets some specially dazzling rags, I expect to see three nice fresh mortgages on those homes out there."
"Ah! Mrs. William sets the pace, does she? It's a good thing father died before he saw the Montgomerys trying to keep up with the Holtons. William prospers?"
"Judged by Mrs. Bill's doings he does. By the way, Jack has been back here."
Amzi turned to see what effect the mention of Jack Holton would have upon her; but in no wise embarrassed, with only a slight lifting of the brows, she said quickly:—
"I thought it likely. I suppose William ran to meet him—general love-feast and all that?"
They were approaching delicate ground; but it seemed as well to go on and be done with it. He told her, more fully than he had recounted any other incident of the sixteen years, of Phil's party; of the insistence of her sisters upon a reconciliation with the William Holtons, and of Jack's appearance on the threshold. His indignation waxed hot; the enormity of the offense was intensified by the fact that he was describing it to Lois; it seemed even more flagrantly directed against her, now that he thought of it, than to Phil or Phil's father. He rose and stood with his back to the fire as he dilated upon it. Lois frowned once or twice, but at the end she laughed, her light little laugh, saying:—
"And William has got rid of him, of course."