It looks like honest money; but--"
Fanny was busy putting the finishing touches to the supper table.
"Mother's going to stop for tea at Mrs. Daggett's, and go to prayer
meeting afterward," she said. "We may as well eat."
The two sat down, facing each other.
"What did you mean, Jim?" asked Fanny, as she passed the bread plate
to her brother. "You said, 'It looks like honest money; but--'"
"I guess I'm a fool," he grumbled; "but there's something about the
whole business I don't like.... Have some of this apple sauce, Fan?"
The girl passed her plate for a spoonful of the thick compound, and
in return shoved the home-dried beef toward her brother.
"I don't see anything queer about it," she replied dully. "I suppose
a person with money might come to Brookville and want to buy a house.
The old Bolton place used to be beautiful, mother says. I suppose it
can be again. And if she chooses to spend her money that way--"
"That's just the point I can't see: why on earth should she want to
saddle herself with a proposition like that?"
Fanny's mute lips trembled. She was thinking she knew very well why
Lydia Orr had chosen to come to Brookville: in some way unknown to
Fanny, Miss Orr had chanced to meet the incomparable Wesley Elliot,
and had straightway set her affections upon him. Fanny had been
thinking it over, ever since the night of the social at Mrs. Solomon
Black's. Up to the moment when Wesley--she couldn't help calling him
Wesley still--had left her, on pretense of fetching a chair, she had
instantly divined that it was a pretense, and of course he had not
returned.
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