“Well, look; what about this brother of hers?”
“Brother? Why, she hasn’t any—”
“Eh! Oh, brother-in-law, I meant; the fellow who married her sister out in Ohio.”
“Iowa,” Mrs. Deane corrected. “Why, I just don’t know. When she got word from the lawyers that she must vacate the house she wrote to him, but she says he never took any notice of her letter.”
“Didn’t she write again? Maybe he didn’t get it.”
“Why, no, she didn’t. She’s sort of—well, I suppose you might say proud, but I’d almost call it touchy. She just wouldn’t write another letter, although I advised her to.”
“Well, what’s he want the house for?” asked Laurie, frowning. “Is he coming here to live in it, or what?”
Mrs. Deane shook her head. “I don’t know, but I did hear that Mr. Sparks had told some one that they were going to tear it down and put up a two-family house there.”
“He’s the banker, isn’t he? Well, I think it’s mighty funny that this brother-in-law chap doesn’t write to her. She ought to get after him again. Or some one ought to do it for her, if she won’t. It doesn’t seem to me, Mrs. Deane, that any man would want to turn his own sister-in-law into the poor-house. Maybe he doesn’t really know how she’s fixed.”
“Well, maybe so, Laurie. I’m sure I’d like to think so. But letters don’t often go astray, and I’m afraid this Mr. Goupil—”