"There's another
important thing--that is, for me," he said. "It's the only thing that
makes me forgive that bass viol for getting in my way."
"What is it?" the Major asked.
"Lucy," said Morgan gently.
Isabel gave him a quick glance, all warm approval, and there was a
murmur of friendliness round the table.
George was not one of those who joined in this applause. He
considered his grandfather's nonsense indelicate, even for second
childhood, and he thought that the sooner the subject was dropped the
better. However, he had only a slight recurrence of the resentment
which had assailed him during the winter at every sign of his mother's
interest in Morgan; though he was still ashamed of his aunt sometimes,
when it seemed to him that Fanny was almost publicly throwing herself
at the widower's head. Fanny and he had one or two arguments in which
her fierceness again astonished and amused him.
"You drop your criticisms of your relatives," she bade him, hotly, one
day, "and begin thinking a little about your own behaviour! You say
people will 'talk' about my--about my merely being pleasant to an old
friend! What do I care how they talk? I guess if people are talking
about anybody in this family they're talking about the impertinent
little snippet that hasn't any respect for anything, and doesn't even
know enough to attend to his own affairs!"
"Snippet,' Aunt Fanny!" George laughed.
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