Chapter III

"Bless your scolding curls--you look as pretty and sweet and out of style as a fashion plate of '65."

Hazel had raked Elvira's hat off and was weaving her fingers through the flat, brown bands of her sister's hair.

"A neat pompadour, with an empire knot, would make an up-to-date etching of you."

Then she caught her by the shoulder and pulled her up in front of a mirror, snuggling her own face down beside Elvira's. "Look there--I've a mind to pinch you; you're three years older than I. What do you mean by looking at least eight younger, and just like a big peach, at that--hey?"

"Maybe it's because I don't frazzle up years of good vitality over little everyday snarls," Elvira replied, serenely, but added, more meekly, "I've been very near to it lately, though, with Eulalie and her young men."

"Eulalie--yes; she ought to be cuffed a time or two; I know her. Look here, Elv, you've simply got to let me fix you a pompadour and have your seams made straight. You'd have a presence to eclipse us all if you'd spunk up to your dressmaker and not let her put off crooked gores on you. I'm going to fix you."

"I thought I came here to nurse you."

"Oh, well, you can coddle me sometimes, when I think I'm getting yellow and peaked. But it's a whole lot of potions and powders just to have you here. All the same, I had another little nail to drive in importing you. I've got an old boy picked out--the baron we call him. He's a worthy soul--upright and straight walking as you please, so it needn't be any obstacle to you that he owns a whole bunch of mills a few miles out. He isn't here now, but soon will be, looking after the mills, and you've got to see him. He's quite a bit older than you, but that's no odds. His name is Courtenay----"

"Erastus?"

"How did you come by it so glibly?"

"One of Eulalie's planets has an uncle named that. He brought him to the house a few times, to brighten up my desert island."

"Oh, sweet innocence! So you know him! Then the romance is already cut and basted."

"There isn't a rag of romance about it. Mr. Courtenay hasn't tendered me his heart and his mills; I should not take them if he did so. Besides, I have a glimmer that Eulalie has her eye upon him."

"Did you ever know of a breathing man Eulalie did not have her eye upon?"

"Barring tramps, not one. Still, Mr. Courtenay might distance the field. Besides, again, Mr. Griswold says he--the uncle--vowed long ago to remain forever true to the memory of his first wife."

"Yes," reflected Hazel, "that is so final! But you'll let me pompadour your hair?"

"Oh, I don't care--if you don't pomp it too loudly."

Two weeks later Hazel wrote a letter to Marion, containing this item:

Elvira has lost the little up-and-down worry wrinkle between her
eyes--the only one she had; she looks about twenty-two. Mr.
Erastus Courtenay has come to Lindale to inspect his mills, but
he hasn't seen the inside of one of them yet. He is here a great
deal.

And this postscript was appended:

Tubs wouldn't hold the roses Mr. Courtenay squanders on Elvira.

Marion incautiously read the letter to Eulalie, and a tempest was at once put to steep in a teapot.

"Oh, brag to me about your modest, self-sacrificing spinsters! Mighty agreeable and willing was Miss Elvira to go and be a tonic to Madame Hazel--and, incidentally, be handy for a rich mill owner to waste roses on! The pair of them! Didn't know anything about it until she got to Lindale? You're green enough for sheep to eat if you think she wasn't planning it all ever since she heard of Hugh's uncle. She knew he would be going to Lindale soon, and mighty easy it was for her and Hazel to cook up a plot to have her there when he came. 'Oh, my, such a surprise to meet you here, Mr. Courtenay!'" Eulalie gave an imitation of Elvira's imagined giggle. "She's got to come straight home again--that's what she has."

"My stars, Laly," besought Marion, "don't beat up a tornado about it. What is it to you if Elvira does marry Hugh's uncle, or anybody she sees fit?"

"She has no business--it's absurd at her age."

"Thirty-two isn't decrepit."

"It's too old for such didoes. And she knows that Mr. Courtenay has vowed never to marry again, and that Hugh will inherit the mills if he doesn't."

"Oh, that's the snag! But you are not engaged to Hugh, are you?"

"No, not yet."

"Did Elvira know you had intentions that way?"

"She might have known I'd take him when I got ready if she kept her webs away from that old donkey of an uncle."

"What mortal, do you presume to say, could divine which one of your ninety and nine misguided admirers you were going, when you get good and ready, to favor with the empty husk of your frivolous little heart? And if anyone could tell, what law or statute have you against Elvira's equal right to the mills, provided she loves the miller?"

"It's scandalous!" Eulalie flew back to her grievance, unmindful of Marion's logic. "She's got to come back where I can keep an eye on her. And if the old guinea comes after her, I'll cut her out and marry him."