The Turmoil | Page 8

no; that was all right."
"You can't think how busy we've all been this year, Bibbs. I often
planned to write--and then, just as I was going to, something would
turn up. And I'm sure it's been just the same way with Jim and Roscoe.
Of course we knew mamma was writing often and--"
"Of course!" he said, readily. "There's a chunk of coal fallen on your
glove, Edith. Better flick it off before it smears. My word! I'd almost
forgotten how sooty it is here."
"We've been having very bright weather this month--for us." She blew
the flake of soot into the air, seeming relieved.
He looked up at the dingy sky, wherein hung the disconsolate sun like a
cold tin pan nailed up in a smoke-house by some lunatic, for a
decoration. "Yes," said Bibbs. "It's very gay." A few moments later, as
they passed a corner, "Aren't we going home?" he asked.
"Why, yes!" Did you want to go somewhere else first?"
"No. Your new driver's taking us out of the way, isn't he?"
"No. This is right. We're going straight home."
"But we've passed the corner. We always turned--"
"Good gracious!" she cried. "Didn't you know we'd moved? Didn't you
know we were in the New House?"
"Why, no!" said Bibbs. "Are you?"
"We've been there a month! Good gracious! Didn't you know--" She
broke off, flushing again, and then went on hastily: "Of course,
mamma's never been so busy in her life; we ALL haven't had time to do
anything but keep on the hop. Mamma couldn't even come to the
station to-day. Papa's got some of his business friends and people from
around the OLD-house neighborhood coming to-night for a big dinner
and 'house-warming'--dreadful kind of people--but mamma's got it all

on her hands. She's never sat down a MINUTE; and if she did, papa
would have her up again before--"
"Of course," said Bibbs. "Do you like the new place, Edith?"
"I don't like some of the things father WOULD have in it, but it's the
finest house in town, and that ought to be good enough for me! Papa
bought one thing I like--a view of the Bay of Naples in oil that's
perfectly beautiful; it's the first thing you see as you come in the front
hall, and it's eleven feet long. But he would have that old fruit picture
we had in the Murphy Street house hung up in the new dining-room.
You remember it--a table and a watermelon sliced open, and a lot of
rouged-looking apples and some shiny lemons, with two dead
prairie-chickens on a chair? He bought it at a furniture- store years and
years ago, and he claims it's a finer picture than any they saw in the
museums, that time he took mamma to Europe. But it's horribly out of
date to have those things in dining-rooms, and I caught Bobby
Lamhorn giggling at it; and Sibyl made fun of it, too, with Bobby, and
then told papa she agreed with him about its being such a fine thing,
and said he did just right to insist on having it where he wanted it. She
makes me tired! Sibyl!"
Edith's first constraint with her brother, amounting almost to
awkwardness, vanished with this theme, though she still kept her full
gaze always to the front, even in the extreme ardor of her denunciation
of her sister-in-law.
"SIBYL!" she repeated, with such heat and vigor that the name seemed
to strike fire on her lips. "I'd like to know why Roscoe couldn't have
married somebody from HERE that would have done us some good!
He could have got in with Bobby Lamhorn years ago just as well as
now, and Bobby'd have introduced him to the nicest girls in town, but
instead of that he had to go and pick up this Sibyl Rink! I met some
awfully nice people from her town when mamma and I were at Atlantic
City, last spring, and not one had ever heard of the Rinks! Not even
HEARD of 'em!"
"I thought you were great friends with Sibyl," Bibbs said.

"Up to the time I found her out!" the sister returned, with continuing
vehemence. "I've found out some things about Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan
lately--"
"It's only lately?"
"Well--" Edith hesitated, her lips setting primly. "Of course, I always
did see that she never cared the snap of her little finger about
ROSCOE!"
"It seems," said Bibbs, in laconic protest, "that she married him."
The sister emitted a shrill cry, to be interpreted as contemptuous
laughter, and, in her emotion, spoke too impulsively: "Why, she'd have
married YOU!"
"No, no," he said; "she couldn't be that bad!"
"I didn't mean--" she began, distressed. "I only meant--I didn't mean--"
"Never mind, Edith," he consoled