"Oh, will you, Sally? I felt sure that you would be touched by Charlie's sufferings. He is your brother, you know, and—and all that," she finished, ineffectively, as she was painfully aware.
"Yes," Sally replied, still with that compression of the lips, "he is." She had been about to say more, but had thought better of it.
"Well," said Patty, after waiting some time for Sally to say what she had decided not to, "thank you, Sally. Nobody else could attend to it so well as you." At which speech Sally smiled rather grimly, if a girl of seventeen can smile grimly. Her smile was as grim as the circumstances would allow.
She found Charlie suspiciously near the door.
"Will you go and see old Mac, Sally? Will you?"
"You come into the back parlor with me, Charlie," Sally answered, "and I'll tell you what I'll do."
When Charlie emerged, half an hour later, he was sulkier than ever, but he was no longer triumphant. Sally went back to school that same night. Patty did not summon her again. Sally had a way of settling things which Miss Patty did not altogether like.
Now it chanced that Jane chose the next day for one of his visits. It was not a happy chance. The day itself was dull and gloomy and chilly and Sally had not yet got over the settling of Charlie. Jane, to be sure, did not know about Charlie, but it would have made no difference if he had known about him. Sally greeted him with no enthusiasm; it almost seemed to Jane that she would rather not have seen him.
He looked at her in surprise. "What's the matter, Sally?" he asked. "Why this—this apathy?" He had been about to call it indifference, but decided against it.
Jane was not without wisdom, if he did not show much of it on this particular day. If it had been the case of another and that other had asked his advice, he would have advised him to drop it all and go home again. But, in our own cases, we are all more or less fools. Therefore Jane did not drop it all and go home.