"I am afraid he thinks that we don't care much to hear from him," Margaret said, the three ladies sitting together, and talking the matter over. "Suppose we all write just as freely as we do to Mr. Granger? We can tell him all the little household events, and how his chair and his place at the table are still called his, and kept for him. I think he would be pleased, don't you, Aura?"
"I do. It isn't a wonder that he writes formally to us when he gets such ceremonious answers."
"To complain of cold replies to cold letters is like the wolf accusing the lamb of muddying the brook," retorted Mrs. Lewis. "I shall waste none of my sweetness on the desert air, and you will be a pair of simpletons if you do. We might expend ourselves in those gushing epistles to him, and after a month or two we should probably get about three lines apiece in return, each line cooler than the last, and not an intimation that he wasn't bored."
"But I think he would be pleased," repeated Margaret doubtfully, beginning to waver.
"What right or reason have you to think so when he never says that he is?" Mrs. Lewis persisted. "For my part, I think that friendship is worthy of acknowledgment from king or kaiser—that is, if he wants it; and if Mr. Southard isn't an iceberg, then he is a very selfish and arrogant man, that's all. You may do as you like. But I shall never again try to get a sunbeam out of that cucumber. I have spoken."
The entrance of Mr. Lewis put an end to their discussion. He came in with a very cross face.
"Here I've got to start for Baltimore, with the thermometer at eighty degrees, and the Confederates swarming up the Shenandoah by tens of thousands, and ready to pounce on anybody south of New York!' Why have I got to go?' Why, my agent is on the point of absconding with the rents, and the insurance policies on my houses are out, and I can't renew them in Boston or New York for love or money; and if things are not seen to there, we shall be beggars. You needn't laugh, madam! It's no joke. I've just seen a man straight from Baltimore, and he says that rascal is all but ready to start on a European tour with my money in his pocket. I shall get a sunstroke, or have an apoplexy; I know I shall."
"A cabbage-leaf in your hat might prevent the sunstroke," his wife said serenely. "As to the apoplexy, I am not so safe about that, if you keep on at this rate. When do you start?"
"To-night; and now it is two o'clock. The rails may be ripped up at any hour. You see now, Mrs. Lewis, the disadvantage of living in one town and having your property in another. You would come to Boston. Nothing else would suit you. And the consequence is, that I've got to go posting down to Baltimore in July, to collect my rents."
Mrs. Lewis laughed merrily.