“What?”
“I was wondering who lived in the next house.”
“The Howes.”
“I did not realize last night that you had 54 neighbors so near at hand,” continued the girl brightly. “Tell me about them.”
“There’s nothin’ to tell.”
“I mean who is in the family?”
“There’s Martin Howe an’ his three sisters, if that’s what you want to know,” snapped Ellen.
Lucy, however, was not to be rebuffed. She attributed her aunt’s ungraciousness to her irritation about the breakfast and, determining to remain unruffled, she went on patiently:
“It’s nice for you to have them so near, isn’t it?”
“It don’t make no difference to me, their bein’ there. I don’t know ’em.” For some reason that Lucy could not fathom, the woman’s temper seemed to be rising, and being a person of tact she promptly shifted the subject.