Keble laughed. “I’m not at all certain that I haven’t.”
Alice watched him curiously, then abandoned the flicker of curiosity and proceeded to give Louise her due. “It’s not so much her brilliance,—though that’s remarkable,—but her tact! My dear, she could run a political campaign single-handed. I’ve never seen the Windroms so beautifully managed in my life. You know we can’t manage them; at our house one of the trio is always falling out of the picture. But Louise! the instant she sees an elbow or a leg or a Windromian prejudice sticking out she flips it back in, or widens the frame to include it, and nobody the worse. Her way of setting people to rights and making them feel it is they who are setting everybody else to rights is impayable . . . And the best you could say for her was wild flowers!”
“Since Mrs. Windrom was first here a good deal of water has flowed under the bridges.”
“I’ll wager it has. Louise wouldn’t be found camping by a stagnant pool.”
Again she watched her brother curiously. He was gazing into the distance, at nothing.
“Sometimes I feel stagnant beside Louise,” he admitted, put off his guard by the unwonted charm of a sisterly chat.
Alice patted his shoulder, with a gesture tender but angular. “Father is purring with pleasure at the way you’ve stuck to your guns, sonny, although, naturally, he wouldn’t say so for all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. In the beginning he used to shake his head in scepticism and sorrow. Now he never lets a dinner guest get away from the house without dragging in you and your colonizing enterprise. Mother, of course, has always doted and still does; but she would have, if you’d gone in for knife-grinding. She would never conceive the possibility of any one doubting you. I frankly did,—not you, but your schemes.”
“There’s plenty to be done yet,” Keble said. “It will take twenty years. Sometimes the future looks as steep to me as Hardscrapple.”
“It won’t look so steep when you’ve got your second wind. I’m full of rosy hopes for you. What’s more, I’m jolly comfortable here. I thought I was going to hate it. I’ve been well fed and waited on. I’ve been amused and sauced by a witty child who isn’t in the least awed by my accursed standoffishness. I think the most remarkable thing about Louise is that she is kind, through and through, without having to be; she could always get her own way without bothering to be kind . . . I’ve also discovered the thrills of being aunt to the most entrancingly ridiculous and succulent infant I’ve ever beheld. Most of all I’ve seen Father and Mother exchanging furtive glances of pride. What more could any old maid ask for.”
Miriam and Girlie joined them. “It’s too warm for tennis,” Girlie complained. “We’re debating whether to go for a swim.”