Struby's drug-store did a large business in hot drinks in the week following Christmas, as citizens and citizenesses met to discuss the return of Lois Montgomery. The annual choir-row in Center Church caused scarcely a ripple; the county poorhouse burned to the ground, and nobody cared particularly; an august professor in the college was laid low with whooping-cough, and even this calamity failed to tickle the community as it would have done in ordinary circumstances.
Wonder and mystery were in the air of Main Street. Persons who had no money in Montgomery's Bank, and whom the liveliest imagination could not dramatize as borrowers from that institution, dropped in casually on fictitious errands, in the hope of seeing or hearing something. Housewives who lived beyond the college, or over in the new bungalow addition across the Monon tracks, who had no business whatever in the neighborhood of the old Montgomery place, made flimsy excuses for visiting that region in the hope of catching a glimpse of a certain lady who, after a long absence, had reappeared in town with bewildering suddenness. What Amzi had said to his sisters Kate, Josie, and Fanny and what they had said to him, and what Mrs. Lois Montgomery Holton had said to them all afforded an ample field for comment where facts were known; and where there were no facts, speculation and invention rioted outrageously. Had Tom Kirkwood seen his former wife? Would Phil break with her father and go to live at Amzi's with her mother? Was it true that Lois had come back to Indiana in the hope of effecting a reconciliation with Jack Holton, of whom unpleasant reports were now reaching Montgomery from the state capital? An intelligent community possessed of a healthy curiosity must be pardoned for polishing its spectacles when a drama so exciting and presenting so many characters is being disclosed upon its stage.
It was said that Mrs. Holton emerged from Amzi's house daily to take the air. She had been observed by credible witnesses at the stamp window of the post-office; again, she had bought violets at the florist's; she had been seen walking across the Madison campus. The attendants in the new Carnegie library had been thrilled by a visit from a strange lady who could have been none other than Mrs. Holton.
At four o'clock on the afternoon of January 2, Mrs. Holton drank a cup of bouillon at Struby's counter, informed the white-jacketed attendant that it was excellent, and crossed Main Street to Montgomery's Bank under the admiring eyes of a dozen young collegians who happened to be loafing in the drug-store. Amzi escorted his sister at once to his private room at the rear, poked the fire, buttoned his coat and sat down.
"Well, Lois, how goes it?"
His question was the one he habitually asked his customers, and he had no idea that anything of importance had happened to his sister since he left her at one o'clock.
"The air in the counting-room is bad, Amzi; you ought to put in ventilators. A little fresh air would increase the efficiency of the clerks one hundred per cent," she remarked, tossing her muff and a package on the table. It was a solid package that fell with a bang.
"Then they'd want more pay. You've got another guess coming."
"No. You'd cut down their wages because they worked less time."
He rubbed his head and chuckled. It was plainly written on his face that he was immensely fond of her, that her presence in the dim, dingy old room gave him pleasure. He clasped his hands behind his head to emphasize his comfort.