"Let me take a mortgage on the property for whatever the work costs," Mabelle pleaded, her lips puckering irresistibly.
Jap descended from the stool and caught her in his arms. Somehow she had, all at once, become his baby sister again. The episode of the straw stack loomed before him. She had puckered her lips just like that when she fled to him for protection. With little coquettish touches, she slipped one arm around his neck, while she smoothed his red locks gently. Bill, looking on, was overcome by an unaccountable restlessness.
"What a pity Isabel isn't home!" he blurted. And Bill never knew why he had recourse to Isabel at that moment. The observation bore the desired fruit. Mabelle freed herself from her brother's embrace, with the pained exclamation:
"Isabel not at home! Oh, Jappie, I have just been waiting for you to tell me about her. Ever since we read in the paper—and the one little reference to her in your letter to Fanny——"
She stopped, her blue eyes filling with tears.
"They went away just after the election was over," Bill explained. "Iz wouldn't leave Jap while the thing was in doubt, not even for her mother."
"I don't think that's quite square," Jap interposed. "Mrs. Granger didn't want to go at all, and only consented when Dr. Hall told her how ill Isabel was. The rest of us knew that Mrs. Granger couldn't live through another winter here; but he had to make Isabel's poor health the pretext when he sent them to Florida for the cold weather."
"Is she—is she seriously sick?" Mabelle asked tremulously. "The mother, I mean."
"It's a desperate hope, a kind of last resort," Bill vouchsafed. "I heard Doc Hall talking to Tom Granger in the bank, the morning before they left. He said he didn't want to scare him, but he wanted to prepare him for the worst, I thought."
"I'm sure if Isabel were at home, she'd insist on your coming right to her," Jap said slowly. "Bill and I have been bunking together up there," he jerked his thumb in the direction of the ceiling. "We have a bedroom and a little combination living-room, dressing-room and library. The library's Bill's part. We take our meals at the hotel, down in the next block. The hotel isn't bad for a town of this size."