"She is talking to your mother, Ethel. You will do her a favor by going to your room until it is over," advised their mother.
"Oh, well, if I'm not wanted, then I'll go," spit out Ethel wickedly, whereupon she turned and hastened up the stairs to her room and slammed the door behind her.
"Ethel has such a temper," her mother sighed deploringly. "She is so different from you, dear. You are like your mother, while she—well, she has her father's ways."
"Papa is not as mean as Ethel," defended Orlean, ever obedient to her mother, yet always upholding her father, it mattered not what the issue.
Her mother sighed again, shifted in her chair, and said no more on that subject. She knew the father better than Orlean, and would not argue. She had been trained not to....
"Now where did you meet Mr. Baptiste, my dear?" she began.
"Where I taught last winter, mother," she replied obediently.
"And how did you come to meet him, daughter?"
"Why, he was calling on a girl friend of mine, and I happened along while he was there, and the girl introduced us."
"M-m. Was that the first time you had seen him?"