their breaths in readiness to burst forth at the first opening.
"He's the nephew—orphan nephew—of Miss Elder—who lives right back of us—our yards touch—we've always been friends—went to school together, Rella's never married—she teaches, you know—and her brother—he owned the home—it's all hers now, he died all of a sudden and left two children—Morton and Susie. Mort was about seven years old and Susie just a baby. He's been an awful cross—but she just idolizes him—she's spoiled him, I tell her."
Mrs. Lane had to breathe, and even the briefest pause left her stranded to wait another chance. The three social benefactors proceeded to distribute their information in a clattering torrent. They sought to inform Mrs. Williams in especial, of numberless details of the early life and education of their subject, matters which would have been treated more appreciatively if they had not been blessed with the later news; and, at the same time, each was seeking for a more dramatic emphasis to give this last supply of incident with due effect.
No regular record is possible where three persons pour forth statement and comment in a rapid, tumultuous stream, interrupted by cross currents of heated contradiction, and further varied by the exclamations and protests of three hearers, or at least, of two; for the one man present soon relapsed into disgusted silence.
Mrs. Williams, turning a perplexed face from one to the other, inwardly condemning the darkening flood of talk, yet conscious of a sinful pleasure in it, and anxious as a guest, and a minister's wife, to be most amiable, felt like one watching three kinetescopes at once. She saw, in confused pictures of blurred and varying outline, Orella Elder, the young New England girl, only eighteen, already a "school ma'am," suddenly left with two children to bring up, and doing it, as best she could. She saw the boy, momentarily changing, in his shuttlecock flight from mouth to mouth, through pale shades of open mischief to the black and scarlet of hinted sin, the terror of the neighborhood, the darling of his aunt, clever, audacious, scandalizing the quiet town.
"Boys are apt to be mischievous, aren't they?" she suggested when it was possible.
"He's worse than mischievous," Mr. Lane assured her sourly. "There's a mean streak in that family."
"That's on his mother's side," Mrs. Lane hastened to add. "She was a queer girl—came from New York."
The Foote girls began again, with rich profusion of detail, their voices rising shrill, one above the other, and playing together at their full height like emulous fountains.
"We ought not to judge, you know;" urged Mrs. Williams. "What do you say he's really done?"
Being sifted, it appeared that this last and most terrible performance was to go to "the city" with a group of "the worst boys of college," to get undeniably drunk, to do some piece of mischief. (Here was great licence in opinion, and in contradiction.)
"Anyway he's to be suspended!" said Miss Rebecca with finality.
"Suspended!" Miss Josie's voice rose in scorn. "Expelled! They said he was expelled."
"In disgrace!" added Miss Sallie.
Vivian Lane sat in the back room at the window, studying in the lingering light of the long June evening. At least, she appeared to be studying. Her tall figure was bent over her books, but the dark eyes blazed under their delicate level brows, and her face flushed and paled with changing feelings.
She had heard—who, in the same house, could escape hearing the Misses Foote?—and had followed the torrent of description, hearsay, surmise and allegation with an interest that was painful in its intensity.
"It's a shame!" she whispered under her breath. "A shame! And nobody to stand up for him!"
She half rose to her feet as if to do it herself, but sank back irresolutely.
A fresh wave of talk rolled forth.
"It'll half kill his aunt."
"Poor Miss Elder! I don't know what she'll do!"
"I don't know what he'll do. He can't go back to college."
"He'll have to go to work."
"I'd like to know where—nobody'd hire him in this town."
The girl could bear it no longer. She came to the door, and there, as they paused to speak to her, her purpose ebbed again.
"My daughter, Vivian, Mrs. Williams," said her mother; and the other callers greeted her familiarly.
"You'd better finish your lessons, Vivian," Mr. Lane suggested.
"I have, father," said the girl, and took a chair by the minister's wife. She had a vague feeling that if she were there, they would not talk so about Morton Elder.
Mrs. Williams hailed the interruption gratefully. She liked the slender girl with the thoughtful eyes and pretty, rather pathetic mouth, and sought to draw her out. But her questions soon led to unfortunate results.
"You are going to college, I suppose?" she presently inquired; and Vivian owned that it was the desire of her heart.
"Nonsense!" said her father. "Stuff and nonsense, Vivian! You're not going to college."
The Foote girls now burst forth in voluble agreement with Mr. Lane. His wife was evidently of the same mind; and Mrs. Williams plainly regretted her question. But Vivian mustered courage enough to make a stand, strengthened perhaps by the depth of the feeling which had brought her into the room.
"I don't know why you're all so down on a girl's going to college. Eve Marks has gone, and Mary Spring is going—and both the Austin girls. Everybody goes now."
"I know one girl that won't," was her father's incisive comment, and her mother said quietly, "A girl's place is at home—'till she marries."
"Suppose I don't want to marry?" said Vivian.
"Don't talk nonsense," her father answered. "Marriage is a woman's duty."
"What do you want to do?" asked Miss Josie in the interests of further combat. "Do you want to be a doctor, like Jane Bellair?"
"I should like to very much indeed," said the girl with quiet intensity. "I'd like to be a doctor in a babies' hospital."
"More nonsense," said Mr. Lane. "Don't talk to me about that woman! You attend to your studies, and then to your home duties, my dear."
The talk rose anew, the three sisters contriving all to agree with Mr. Lane in his opinions about college, marriage and Dr. Bellair, yet to disagree violently among themselves.
Mrs. Williams rose to go, and in the lull that followed the liquid note of a whippoorwill met the girl's quick ear. She quietly slipped out, unnoticed.
The Lane's home stood near the outer edge of the town, with an outlook across wide meadows and soft wooded hills. Behind, their long garden backed on that of Miss Orella Elder, with a connecting gate in the gray board fence. Mrs. Lane had grown up here. The house belonged to her mother, Mrs. Servilla Pettigrew, though that able lady was seldom in it, preferring to make herself useful among two growing sets of grandchildren.
Miss
