Cyrus had taken grandma out of the dining-room and the others were following, Estelle walking proudly, her arm within Dave’s. She was not very tall—we did not think that she had quite gotten her full growth, although she was eighteen—but her fair head was finely set and her hauteur was quite impressive.
The minister’s gentle, placating voice went on as we went out of the room and the strains of “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” on Leander’s fiddle came from the kitchen as a curious accompaniment. For long afterwards I could not hear that air without having the pang of that moment vaguely repeated.
Grandma retired to her own room, and Estelle disappeared with Dave. Uncle Horace, with a sudden change of manner, endeavored to draw the minister and Uncle Silas and Dr. Yorke into a political discussion, in which effort he was seconded by Cyrus, who was not, however, as successful as the older man in feigning to be wholly forgetful of the painful episode and quite at his ease.
Cousin Sarah Saunders rambled on inconsequently, with reminiscences of the disastrous results of second marriages and second families. She addressed herself to Alice Yorke and to whomsoever would listen, and I knew that Cyrus, while he struggled to preserve his dignity, was being stabbed by small thorns. But that knowledge went only a little way toward making me forgive him for being so hard to Dave.
None of the guests stayed long. Cousin Sarah Saunders and her seven were the last to go, and I hastened their departure a little by loading them down with nuts and cake and candy.
As soon as the door closed upon them I hastened to find Dave and Estelle, leaving Uncle Horace and Cyrus to a conference which they evidently did not wish to share with any one.
Dave’s door was locked and he would not open it.
“Go away now, Bathsheba, do go away!” came in a hoarse, muffled tone.
When anything went wrong with the aliens they had always wanted to have it out by themselves, while the rest of us, even Cyrus as a boy, shared our woes. I found Estelle prone upon her bed. The face she turned to me was flushed and miserable, but not tear-stained.
“Did he tell you?” she cried. “Such dreadful things! Going to races and borrowing money to pay his bets! Those are the things that they accuse him of. And he won’t deny them!”