"Well, some of 'em might feel _that_ desperate at least," he explained.
"Prohibition's a safeguard for the disappointed in love."
This phrase and a previous one stirred Florence, who had been sitting
quietly, according to request, and "resting", but not resting her
curiosity. "_Who's_ disappointed in love, papa?" she inquired with an
explosive eagerness that slightly startled her preoccupied parents.
"What _is_ all this about Aunt Julia, and grandpa goin' to live alone,
and people committing suicide and prohibition and everything? What _is_
all this, mamma?"
"Nothing, Florence."
"Nothing! That's what you always say about the very most inter'sting
things that happen in the whole family! What _is_ all this, papa?"
"It's nothing that would be interesting to little girls, Florence.
Merely some family matters."
"My goodness!" Florence exclaimed. "I'm not a 'little girl' any more,
papa! You're _always_ forgetting my age! And if it's a family matter I
belong to the family, I guess, about as much as anybody else, don't I?
Grandpa himself isn't any _more_ one of the family than I am, I don't
care _how_ old he is!"
This was undeniable, and her father laughed. "It's really nothing you'd
care about one way or the other," he said.
"Well, I'd care about it if it's a secret," Florence insisted. "If it's
a secret I'd want to know it, whatever it's about."
"Oh, it isn't a secret, particularly, I suppose. At least, it's not to
be made public for a time; it's only to be known in the family."
"Well, didn't I just _prove_ I'm as much one o' the family as----"
"Never mind," her father said soothingly. "I don't suppose there's any
harm in your knowing it--if you won't go telling everybody. Your Aunt
Julia has just written us that she's engaged."
Mrs. Atwater uttered an exclamation, but she was too late to check him.
"I'm afraid you oughtn't to have told Florence. She _isn't_ just the
most discreet----"
"Pshaw!" he laughed. "She certainly is 'one of the family', however, and
Julia wrote that all of the family might be told. You'll not speak of it
outside the family, will you, Florence?"
But Florence was not yet able to speak of it, even inside the family; so
surprising, sometimes, are parents' theories of what will not interest
their children. She sat staring, her mouth open, and in the uncertain
illumination of the room these symptoms of her emotional condition went
unobserved.
"I say, you won't speak of Julia's engagement outside the family, will
you, Florence?"
"Papa!" she gasped. "Did Aunt Julia write she was _engaged_?"
"Yes."
"To get _married_?"
"It would seem so."
"To _who_?"
"'To whom,' Florence," her mother suggested primly.
"Mamma!" the daughter cried. "Who's Aunt Julia engaged to get married
to? Noble Dill?"
"Good gracious, _no_!" Mrs. Atwater exclaimed. "What an absurd idea!
It's to a young man in the place she's visiting--a stranger to all of
us. Julia only met him a few weeks ago." Here she forgot Florence, and
turned again to her husband, wearing her former expression of
experienced foreboding.
"It's just as I said. It's exactly like Julia to do such a reckless
thing!"
"But as we don't know anything at all about the young man," he
remonstrated, "how do you know it's reckless?"
"How do you know he's young?" Mrs. Atwater retorted crisply. "All in the
world she said about him was that he's a lawyer. He may be a widower,
for all we know, or divorced, with seven or eight children."
"Oh, no, Mollie!"
"Why, he _might_!" she insisted. "For all we know, he may be a widower
for the third or fourth _time_, or divorced, with any _number_ of
children! If such a person proposed to Julia, you know yourself she'd
hate to be disappointing!"
Her husband laughed. "I don't think she'd go so far as to actually
accept 'such a person' and write home to announce her engagement to the
family. I suppose most of her swains here have been in the habit of
proposing to her just as frequently as she was unable to prevent them
from going that far; and while I don't think she's been as discouraging
with them as she might have been, she's never really accepted any of
'em. She's never been engaged before."
"No," Mrs. Atwater admitted. "Not to this extent! She's never quite
announced it to the family before, that is."
"Yes; I'd hate to have Julia's job when she comes back!" Julia's brother
admitted ruefully.
"What job?"
"Breaking it to her admirers."
"Oh, _she_ isn't going to do that!"
"She'll have to, now," he said. "She'll either have to write the news to
'em, or else tell 'em, face to face, when she comes home."
"She won't do either."
"Why, how could she get out of it?"
His wife smiled pityingly. "She hasn't set a time for coming home, has
she? Don't you know enough of Julia's ways to see she'll never in the
world stand up to the music? She writes that all the family can be told,
because she knows the news will leak out, here and there, in confidence,
little by little, so by the time she gets home they'll all have been
through their first spasms, and after that she hopes they'll just send
her some forgiving flowers and greet her with manly hand-clasps--and get
ready to usher at the wedding!"
"Well," said Mr. Atwater, "I'm afraid you're right. It does seem rather
like Julia to stay away till the first of the worst is over. I'm really
sorry for some of 'em. I suppose it _will_ get whispered about, and
they'll hear it; and there are some of the poor things that might take
it pretty hard."
"'Take it pretty hard!'" his wife echoed loudly. "There's _one_ of 'em,
at least, who'll just merely lose his reason!"
"Which one?"
"Noble Dill."
At this, the slender form of Florence underwent a spasmodic seizure in
her chair, but as the fit was short and also noiseless, it passed
without being noticed.
"Yes," said Mr. Atwater thoughtfully. "I suppose he will."
"He certainly will!" Mrs. Atwater declared. "Noble's mother told me last
week that he'd got so he was just as liable to drop a fountain-pen in
his coffee as a lump of sugar; and when any one speaks to him he either
doesn't know it, or else jumps. When he says anything, himself, she says
they can scarcely ever make out what he's talking about. He was trying
enough before Julia went away; but since she's been gone Mrs. Dill says
he's like nothing in her experience. She says he doesn't inherit it;
Mr. Dill wasn't anything like this about her."