“Really, Agneta, if that isn’t materialism.” He came over and sat down on the hearth-rug beside his sister. They were not at all alike. Where Agneta was small, Louis was large. Her hair and eyes were black, and his of a dark reddish-brown.
“I didn’t know you were listening,” she said.
“Well, I wasn’t. I just heard, and I give you fair warning, Agneta, that if there are going to be telephones in your heaven, I’m going somewhere else. I shall have had enough of them here. Hear the bells, the silver bells, the tintinabulation that so musically swells. From the bells, bells, bells, bells—bells, bells, bells.”
Agneta first pulled Louis’s hair, and then put her fingers in her ears.
“Stop! stop this minute! Oh, Louis, please. Oh, Lizabeth, make him stop. That thing always drives me perfectly crazy, and he knows it.”
“All right. It’s done. I’ve finished. I’m much more merciful than Poe. I only wanted to point out that if that was your idea of heaven, it wasn’t mine.”
“Oh, good gracious!” cried Agneta suddenly. She sprang up and darted to the door.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’ve absolutely and entirely forgotten to order any food for to-morrow. Any food whatever. All right, Louis, you won’t laugh when you have to lunch on bread and water, and Lizabeth takes the afternoon train back to her horrible Harford place, because we have starved her.”
Louis gave a resigned sigh and leaned comfortably back against an empty chair. For some moments he gazed dreamily at Elizabeth. Then he said: “How nicely your hair shines. I like you all white and gold like that. If Browning had known you he needn’t have written. ‘What’s become of all the gold, used to hang and brush their bosoms.’ You’ve got your share.”