“Oh, yes; Laconia! Carroll was telling me that had been your home. He has some relatives there himself.”
“Yes, I know them,” Bruce said, meeting Mills’s gaze carelessly. “The fact is I know, or used to know, nearly everybody in the town.”
“Carroll may have told you that I had some acquaintance with the place myself. That was a long time ago. I went there to look after some business interests for my father. It was a part of my apprenticeship. I seem to recall people of your name; Storrs is not so common—?”
“My father was John Storrs—a lawyer,” said Bruce in the tone of one stating a fact unlikely to be of particular interest.
“Yes; John Storrs——” Mills repeated musingly. “I recall him very well—and his wife—your mother—of course. Delightful people. I’ve always remembered those months I spent there with a particular pleasure. For the small place Laconia was then, there was a good deal doing—dances and picnics. I remember your mother as the leading spirit in all the social affairs. Is she——”
“Father and mother are both gone. My mother died a little more than a year ago.”
“I’m very sorry,” Mills murmured sympathetically. “For years I had hoped to go back to renew old acquaintances, but Laconia is a little inaccessible from here and I never found it possible.”
Whether Mills had referred to his temporary residence in Laconia merely to show how unimportant and incidental it was in his life remained a question. But Bruce felt that if Mills could so lightly touch upon it, he himself was equal to gliding over it with like indifference. Mills asked with a smile whether Gardner’s Grove was still in existence, that having been a favorite picnic ground, an amateurish sort of country club where the Laconians used to have their dances. The oak trees there were the noblest he had ever seen. Bruce expressed regret that the grove was gone....
Mills was shrewd; and Bruce was aware that the finely formed head across the table housed a mind that carefully calculated all the chances of life even into the smallest details. He wondered whether he had borne himself as well as Mills in the ordeal. The advantage had been on Mills’s side; it was his house, his table. Possibly he had been waiting for some such opportunity as this to sound the son of Marian Storrs as to what he knew—hoped perhaps to surprise him into some disclosure of the fact if she had ever, in a moment of weakness or folly, spoken of him as other than a passing acquaintance.
“We’ll go down to the billiard room to smoke,” Mills remarked at the end of the dinner. “We’ll have our coffee there.”