Several new varieties of thorn outcropped in Elvira’s daily walk. So small a point as a new stock collar, sober gray though it was, occasioned one.
“No doubt Mr. Griswold’s uncle will find it ‘so engrossing.’” Eulalie’s voice was sourly satirical, and her soft eyebrows made sharp angles.
Elvira stared in hopeless amaze at her grasping sister.
“She had two new young men yesterday—can it be possible she wants Mr. Courtenay, too?” wondered the harassed elder.
A loosening of the tension on Elvira’s strained nerves came with the visit of Marion, the third daughter of the house, for this fact dovetailed neatly with a request from Hazel, the second daughter. She was not very well; was run down, and needed the tonic of companionship from home. Would Elvira come for a while and be the medicine? Possibly a change would do the latter good, and prove a reciprocal tonic.
“Tonic! It would be a balm of Gilead—an elixir of life—a sojourn at the fountain of youth and happiness for me to get away from the chaperoning of Eulalie for a while,” Elvira admitted.
“Then go.” Marion settled the question for her with kindly dispatch. “I’ll look after the minx, and tell her some useful truth now and then, too.”
III.
“Bless your scolding curls—you look as pretty and sweet and out of style as a fashion plate of ’65.”
Hazel had raked Elvira’s hat off and was weaving her fingers through the flat, brown bands of her sister’s hair.