"What are you incubating on, Fannie?"
Mrs. Cole hesitated for a moment, then she said tragically, "I am afraid she cares for him."
No one had to ask who was meant.
"What did I tell you?" exclaimed Mrs. Cunningham.
"What makes you think so?" asked the practical Miss Marbury.
Fannie Cole shook her head. "Not from anything she said. She didn't mention the subject. It was from what she didn't say. She made me think of a pent-up volcano."
Proceeding from the intimate source it did, this testimony, though metaphorical, was felt to be most interesting.
"And if the volcano bursts, what will become of poor Herbert?" murmured Mrs. Baxter.
"That's it, of course. Yet it isn't the only thing," responded Mrs. Cole. "What will become of Lydia? What will become of all three of them?" The sociological vista which opened before her was evidently so appalling that she leaned back limply in the straw chair on which she was sitting. But the attitude was productive of philosophy, for she suddenly said with the air of one rhapsodizing, but who nevertheless utters an indictment against Providence: