“Well, that part of it isn’t especially strange, Mollie.  He was born and brought up in a town three hundred miles from here.  I don’t see just how we could have heard his name unless he visited here or got into the papers in some way.”

Mrs. Atwater seemed unwilling to yield a mysterious point.  She rocked decorously in her rocking-chair, shook her head, and after setting her lips rigidly, opened them to insist that she could never change her mind:  Julia had acted very abruptly.  “Why couldn’t she have let her poor father know at least a few days before she did?”

Mr. Atwater sighed.  “Why, she explains in her letter that she only knew it, herself, an hour before she wrote.”

“Her poor father!” his wife repeated commiseratingly.

“Why, Mollie, I don’t see how father’s especially to be pitied.”

“Don’t you?” said Mrs. Atwater.  “That old man, to have to live in that big house all alone, except a few negro servants?”

“Why, no!  About half the houses in the neighbourhood, up and down the street, are fully occupied by close relatives of his:  I doubt if he’ll be really as lonely as he’d like to be.  And he’s often said he’d give a great deal if Julia had been a plain, unpopular girl.  I’m strongly of the opinion, myself, that he’ll be pleased about this.  Of course it may upset him a little at first.”

“Yes; I think it will!” Mrs. Atwater shook her head forebodingly.  “And he isn’t the only one it’s going to upset.”

“No, he isn’t,” her husband admitted seriously.  “That’s always been the trouble with Julia; she never could bear to seem disappointing; and so, of course, I suppose every one of ’em has a special idea that he’s really about the top of the list with her.”

“Every last one of ’em is positive of it,” said Mrs. Atwater.  “That was Julia’s way with ’em!”

“Yes, Julia’s always been much too kind-hearted for other people’s good.”  Thus Mr. Atwater summed up Julia; and he was her brother.  Additionally, since he was the older, he had known her since her birth.

“If you ask me,” said his wife, “I’ll really be surprised if it all goes through without a suicide.”

“Oh, not quite suicide, perhaps,” Mr. Atwater protested.  “I’m glad it’s a fairly dry town though.”

She failed to fathom his simple meaning.  “Why?”

“Well, some of ’em might feel that desperate at least,” he explained.  “Prohibition’s a safeguard for the disappointed in love.”

This phrase and a previous one stirred Florence, who had been sitting quietly, according to request, and “resting”, but not resting her curiosity. “Who’s disappointed in love, papa?” she inquired with an explosive eagerness that slightly startled her preoccupied parents.  “What is all this about Aunt Julia, and grandpa goin’ to live alone, and people committing suicide and prohibition and everything?  What is all this, mamma?”