“Believe that she will marry him! She has real pretty manners when she is with them, and really tries not to talk slang. But I don’t believe it. He treats her as he would treat any one else; I have seen them together.”
“Perhaps she will. People say so,” said Tessa.
Poor motherless, sisterless Sue! Was she making a disappointment for herself out of nothing? Or was it out of a something like hers?
It was certainly true that Sue Greyson had taken a summer tour with Mrs. Towne and Mr. Ralph Towne, and that she had spent more of her time during the last year at Old Place than in her own small, unlovely home. She loved her father “well enough,” she would have told you; but after the months at Old Place, she found the cottage in Dunellen a stale and prosaic affair; her father had old Aunt Jane to keep house for him, why did he need her? He would have to do without her some day. Doctor Lake was great fun, why could he not be interested in him?
“He is a stranger, not my only daughter,” her father had once replied.
“Your father will be glad enough and proud enough that he let you come to Old Place,” comforted Grace Geer, when Sue told her that he missed her at home. “Ralph Towne’s wife will be a happy woman for more reasons than one; and he is interested in you, as one can see at a glance. He told his mother to-day that he should always be glad that they had come to Old Place.”
II.—THE SILENT SIDE.
It was nearly six weeks after the day that she had watched him as far as the clump of willows that he came again. Sue Greyson had driven him into Dunellen that morning and had stopped at the gate on her return to tell her about her “grand splendid, delightful times” at Old Place.
“Cousin Grace has gone away; how we miss her music! Mr. Ralph did not care for it, but Mrs. Towne and I cared. Mrs. Towne says that I ought to have a music teacher; but I never did practice when I had one. I can’t apply my mind to any thing; Mr. Ralph says that I learn by observation. I wonder why wise men choose silly wives always,” she added consciously, playing with the reins.
“Do they?” asked Tessa, picking a lilac leaf from the shrubbery.