“Well, I—I—went up to see you and hear all about your New York trip. Milly’s bragging all over town about a swell dinner they gave you down there, and how you’re going down there to live and have swell dinners all the year ’round.”
“Don’t worry, Ma, I’m not going. The Thornes have changed their minds.”
Nathan went on toward home at the end of another ten minutes. Grimly he considered two things to which his mother had given voice, her worst fears about the man who had come down from the upstairs of Nathan’s home in company with Milly and—his mother’s comment after she had forced him to tell her all about the “swell” dinner.
“Oh, Natie,” she had cried anxiously, “I do hope you remembered your manners and said ‘please’ and folded your napkin afterwards, like I always tried to teach you at home!”
V
“Milly,” demanded the husband when he faced his wife in the kitchen half an hour later, “what was Si Plumb doing upstairs with you, when mother called the first of the afternoon?”
The girl flashed him a look of defiance.
“So! Your mother’s been carryin’ tales, has she? Well, it’s just like her! If you want to know, Mr. Smartie, I sent for Si to come and tighten the faucets in the upstairs bathroom.” Si had long since quit the tannery and become a steam-fitter in the village.
But somehow Milly’s explanation sounded thin.
“I could have done such a simple job as that,” Nathan observed. “You didn’t need to call Si and run up a plumber’s bill!”