Sally Winn was Father's hypochondriacal patient who called him up at all hours of the day and night for an imaginary heart trouble that was supposed to be carrying her off. She did not feel safe with Father out of the county and never let him get away if she could help it.
"Why don't you suggest it to her? She might come on and visit her cousin, Reginald Kent."
"Reginald Kent! By Jove, I forgot that fellow when I proposed New York as a good place for you girls to top off your very incomplete education," and Zebedee groaned.
"Well, what is the matter with Reginald Kent?" bridled Dum.
"Matter! Nothing's the matter, that's what's the matter. See here, Dum Tucker, if you go to New York and fall in love with that good-looking, clever young man I'll kill myself," declared the desperate Zebedee, always afraid that some man would come along and cut him out with his girls.
"Nonsense, Zebedeedlums! Reginald Kent will have to fall in love with me before I fall in love with him."
"Well, if that's so, I'll fix him! I'll tell him what a bad proposition you are: mean, ungenerous, deceitful, secretive. I'll put him on to you." As these were all the things Dum was not, we felt safe.
"Shan't we let Mary Flannagan know our plans? She may want to join us there," suggested Dee.
"Of course we want dear old Mary," Dum and I cried together.
We all of us thought with regret of what a winter like the one we were planning to have would have meant to Annie Pore.