"Listen, Clancy," said she placatingly. "Florence was just here,
and she says--and I agree--that there is no question that Joe
Pickering is devoted to Bill. Now, I don't say that Billy is
equally devoted--"
"Ha! Better not!" said Clarence at white heat, one eye watchful
over the top of the paper.
"But I DO say," pursued Rachael steadily, "that she is with him a
good deal more than she will admit. Yesterday, for instance, when
she was playing tennis with the Parmalees and the Pinckard boy,
Kent came up to the house to get some ginger ale. I happened to be
dummy, and I went out on the terrace. Joe's horse was down near
the courts, and Joe and Billy were sitting there on one of the
benches--where the others were I don't know. When Kent went down
with the ginger ale, Joe got on his horse and went off. Of course
it was only for a few minutes, but Billy didn't say anything about
it--"
Her voice, with a tentative question in it, rested in air.
Clarence turned a page with some rustling of paper.
"Then Florence says," Rachael went on after a moment, "that when
she and Gardner stopped here Wednesday night Joe was here, and
Vivvie Sartoris wasn't here. Now, of course, I don't KNOW, for I
didn't ask Alfred---"
"There you go," said the sick man witheringly. "That's right--ask
the maids, and get all the servants talking; all come down on the
heels of a poor little girl like a pack of yapping wolves! I
suppose if she was plain and unattractive--I should think you'd be
ashamed," he went on, changing his high and querulous key to one
of almost priestly authority and reproof, "Upon my word, it's
beneath your dignity. My little girl comes to me, and she explains
the whole matter. Pickering admires her--she can't help that--and
she has an influence over him. She tells me he hasn't touched a
thing but beer for six weeks, just because she asked him to give
up heavy drinking. He told her the other day that if he had met
her a few years ago, Lucy never would have left him. She's wakened
the boy up, he's a different fellow--"
"All that may be true," Rachael said quickly, the color that his
preposterous rebuke had summoned to her cheeks still flushing
them, "still, you don't want Billy to marry Joe Pickering! You
know that sort of pity, and that business of reforming a man--"
She paused, but Clarence did not speak. "Not that Billy herself
realizes it, I daresay," Rachael added presently, watching the
reader's absorbed face for an answering look.