“What are you two quarrelling about?” cried a gay voice behind us, and we looked round into the laughing eyes of Miss Dale. She was the one cottager we knew in Saratoga, but when we were with her we felt that we knew everybody, so hospitable was the sense of world which her kindness exhaled.
“It was Mrs. March who was quarrelling,” I said. “I was only trying to convince her that she was wrong, and of course one has to lift one’s voice. I hope I hadn’t the effect of halloaing.”
“Well, I merely heard you above the steam harmonicon at the switchback,” said Miss Dale. “I don’t know whether you call that holloaing.”
“Oh, Miss Dale,” said my wife, “we are in such a fatal—”
“Pickle,” I suggested, and she instantly adopted the word in her extremity.
“—pickle with some people that Providence has thrown in our way, and that we want to do something for”; and in a labyrinth of parentheses that no man could have found his way into or out of, she possessed Miss Dale of the whole romantic fact. “It was Mr. March, of course, who first discovered them,” she concluded, in plaintive accusation.
“Poor Mr. March!” cried Miss Dale. “Well, it is a pathetic case, but it isn’t the only one, if that’s any comfort. Saratoga is reeking with just such forlornities the whole summer long; but I can quite understand how you feel about it, Mrs. March.” We came to a corner, and she said abruptly: “Excuse my interrupting your quarrel! Not quite so loud, Mr. March!” and she flashed back a mocking look at me as she skurried off down the street with astonishing rapidity.
“How perfectly heartless!” cried my wife. “I certainly thought she would suggest something—offer to do something.”
“I relied upon her, too,” I said; “but now I have my doubts whether she was really going down that street till she saw that it was the best way to escape. We’re certainly in trouble, my dear, if people avoid us in this manner.”