Chapter II

A demure black bow in Elvira's hair drew Eulalie's inquisitive glance at dinner the next evening.

"Since when have you taken to vain adornments?" she asked, an edgy emphasis on the pronoun. "It's miles out of style, you know."

Elvira received the information with tranquillity.

"Since when have you taken to observing what I wore? Same old bow that has decked me for some weeks. I never regarded it as the latest importation."

"Oh! I didn't know but you fancied Mr. Griswold's uncle was coming again."

"Not having learned to fish in my youth, I should hardly begin now." Elvira partook peacefully of her soup.

Mr. Griswold's uncle came again. When it was time to depart his nephew had to remind him of the fact.

"Your sister's conversation is so deeply engrossing," he apologized, blandly, to Eulalie.

"Is it?" Eulalie asked, languidly remote.

Several new varieties of thorn outcropped in Elvira's daily walk. So small a point as a new stock collar, sober gray though it was, occasioned one.

"No doubt Mr. Griswold's uncle will find it 'so engrossing.'" Eulalie's voice was sourly satirical, and her soft eyebrows made sharp angles.

Elvira stared in hopeless amaze at her grasping sister.

"She had two new young men yesterday--can it be possible she wants Mr. Courtenay, too?" wondered the harassed elder.

A loosening of the tension on Elvira's strained nerves came with the visit of Marion, the third daughter of the house, for this fact dovetailed neatly with a request from Hazel, the second daughter. She was not very well; was run down, and needed the tonic of companionship from home. Would Elvira come for a while and be the medicine? Possibly a change would do the latter good, and prove a reciprocal tonic.

"Tonic! It would be a balm of Gilead--an elixir of life--a sojourn at the fountain of youth and happiness for me to get away from the chaperoning of Eulalie for a while," Elvira admitted.

"Then go." Marion settled the question for her with kindly dispatch. "I'll look after the minx, and tell her some useful truth now and then, too."