"Well, did you read the stuff?"
"Yes," Adelle replied, holding out the package; "I read some of them."
"That's more'n I could do," he said, receiving the letters and staring at them as if they had been Egyptian hieroglyphs. "What could you make out of 'em?"
"One thing!" Adelle exclaimed. "Your grandfather and my grandfather must have been own brothers."
"You don't say!" Tom Clark exclaimed, throwing back his head and giving vent to that robust, ironical laugh that Adelle had expected. "So old Stan Clark was your great-uncle?"
Adelle nodded.
"Just think of that now!" and the mason went off into another peal of laughter which made Adelle uncomfortable. He did not take seriously his relationship with the mistress of Highcourt. "I bet old grandfather Stan would have been mighty surprised if he could see his niece and her swell house!"
Suddenly the mason rose, and, fetching out a box from his house, said with an elaborate flourish of ironical courtesy,—
"Sit down, cousin, and we'll talk it over."
Adelle accepted the seat meekly.