"Clara Frost would have helped him," said Amelia. "Clara always has so much sympathy for our dear boy."
"How about Miss Fairlie? Does she feel for him?" Mr. Beekman now inquired. He was answered by a trio of voices. Miss Fairlie feel for him! She was insanely in love with him. She could not live without him. It was "Ollie, come here," "Ollie, go there."
"And does he follow?" was Mr. Beekman's next question. Alas, they had to assent.
Oliver actually seemed to be hypnotized by this strange, elfish creature. She left him no free play. The house was turned upside down with her caprices. She could neither rest herself, nor let others rest. She could do nothing comfortably. She was not satisfied to have meals in the dining-room. She must have breakfast on the terrace, luncheon on the north veranda, and dinner on the south. The first day she came she had insisted on putting rum in her tea. She had made Oliver frizzle his hair. She called him a dear old goose, and when Mrs. Van Voorst had expostulated on having her grandson called a goose, she had replied, "But he is my dear old goose who lays golden eggs."
Mr. Beekman listened aghast. He could not question the veracity of the ladies. Their earnestness was only too genuine, also the soupçon of bitterness behind the words.
"Mercenary creature!" said Miss Sabrina, "I suppose she was alluding to the property."
"It is very hard to keep up with a woman," murmured Mr. Beekman.
"It is a terrible humiliation," said Mrs. Van Voorst. "Heaven knows the whole thing is contrary to my wishes. A goose that lays golden eggs! My grandson! Did anybody ever hear of a young man of family being called such a thing. I could not endure it at all except that facts are facts, and duty is duty, and that it is necessary to think about the property."
Mr. Beekman being invited to stay to luncheon accepted demurely, asking presently to be allowed to take a walk in the garden and see the flowers. He was eagerly alert for the return of the protographing party. He had listened without clearly comprehending to the account of Ethel. He had taken nothing in. He was not a man to jump at conclusions. He wanted time to think, to reduce the points of evidence to logical order. He tried to go over the facts of the case, but it was so hard to seize a fact. Each seemed to slip elusively from his fingers and perched itself up contradictorily, bringing all his conclusions to naught. While he walked up one path and down another, stopping first at a white blossom and then at a pink one, as if in the hope of finding a lost scent, he was reviewing the case, rehearsing to
