Madam Fulton was at the library table, considering her morning mail, and
Billy Stark sat on the veranda just outside the window where she could
call to him and be cheerfully answered. Presently Electra came in, a
book, a pencil, and some slips of paper in her hand. There was intense
consideration on her brow. She had on, her grandmother thought with
discouragement, her clubwoman's face. Billy Stark, seeing her, got up
and with his cigar and his newspaper wandered away. He had some
compassion for Electra and her temperament, though not for that could he
abstain from the little observances due his engagement to Madam Fulton.
He had a way of bringing in a flower from the garden and presenting it
to the old lady with an exaggerated significance. Electra always winced,
but Madam Fulton was delighted. He called her "Florrie," prettily, and
"Florrie, dear." Again Electra shrank, and then he took the wrinkled
hand. One day Madam Fulton looked up at him with a droll mischief in her
eyes.
"I suppose it's an awful travesty, isn't it, Billy?"
"Not for me," said Billy loyally. "Can't I be in love with a woman at
the end of fifty years? I should smile."
"It's great fun," she owned. Then more than half in earnest, "Billy, do
you suppose I shall go to hell?"
This morning Electra had found something to puzzle her.
"I've been working on your book a little, grandmother," she began.
"What book? My soul and body!" The old lady saw the cover and laid down
her pen. "That's my 'Recollections.' What are you doing with that?"
"They are extremely interesting," said Electra absorbedly. She sat down
and laid her notes aside, to run over a doubtful page. "We are going to
have an inquiry meeting on it."
"We? Who?"
"The club. Everybody was deeply disappointed because you've refused to
say anything; but it occurred to us we might give an afternoon to
classifying data in it, naming people you just refer to, you know. I am
doing the Brook Farm section."
Madam Fulton sank back in her chair and looked despairingly from the
window for Billy Stark.
"I shall never," she said, "hear the last of that book!"
"Why should you wish to hear the last of it?" asked Electra. "It is a
very valuable book. It would be more so if you would only be frank about
it. But I can understand that. I told the club it was your extreme
delicacy. You simply couldn't mention names."
"No, I couldn't," murmured the old lady. "I couldn't."
"But here is something, grandmother. You must help me out here. Here
where you talk about the crazy philanthropist who had the colonization
scheme--not Liberia--no, that's farther on--Well, you say he came to
grandfather and asked him to give something to the fund." She was
regarding Madam Fulton with clear eyes of interrogation.
"No, no, I don't remember," said the old lady impatiently. "Well, go
on."
"You don't remember?"
"Yes, yes, of course I remember, in a way. But go on, Electra."
"Well, then the philanthropist asked him to be one of the five men who
would guarantee a certain sum at their death, and grandfather was
indignant and said, 'Charity begins at home.' Listen." She found her
page and read, "'I shall assuredly leave every inch of ground and every
cent I possess to my wife, and that, not because she is an advanced
woman but because she is not.'"
"Of course!" corroborated the old lady. "Precisely. There's a slap at
suffrage. That's what I mean it for, and you can tell 'em so."
Electra did not stop to register her pain at that. She held up one hand
to enjoin attention.
"But listen, grandmother. You don't see the bearing of it yet. That was
five years after grandfather made his will, leaving this place away from
you."
"Well, what of it?"
"Five years after, grandmother! And here, by his expressed intention, he
meant to leave it to you--not to his son, but you. Do you see what that
implies?"
"I don't know what it implies," said the old lady, "but I know I shall
fly all to pieces in about two minutes if you don't stop winding me up
and asking me questions."