truth, I believe he would like that a good deal better; I believe that,
if there's anything he hates, it's openness and candor." Alma laughed,
and put her arms round her mother, who could not help laughing a little,
too.




II.

The winter did not renew for Christine and Mela the social opportunity
which the spring had offered. After the musicale at Mrs. Horn's, they
both made their party-call, as Mela said, in due season; but they did not
find Mrs. Horn at home, and neither she nor Miss Vance came to see them
after people returned to town in the fall. They tried to believe for a
time that Mrs. Horn had not got their cards; this pretence failed them,
and they fell back upon their pride, or rather Christine's pride. Mela
had little but her good-nature to avail her in any exigency, and if Mrs.
Horn or Miss Vance had come to call after a year of neglect, she would
have received them as amiably as if they had not lost a day in coming.
But Christine had drawn a line beyond which they would not have been
forgiven; and she had planned the words and the behavior with which she
would have punished them if they had appeared then. Neither sister
imagined herself in anywise inferior to them; but Christine was
suspicious, at least, and it was Mela who invented the hypothesis of the
lost cards. As nothing happened to prove or to disprove the fact, she
said, "I move we put Coonrod up to gittun' it out of Miss Vance, at some
of their meetun's."

"If you do," said Christine, "I'll kill you."