on a cloth. Her voice, sharp at the beginning, rose to a shrill
unrestrained wrath.

"I wonder at the brass of her speaking to you at all let alone
writing here. Just you give me the letter and I'll shut her up. The
idea! I hope you were cool to her, the way they treated us. Stay
with them--I guess not!"

"But I thought of going," Linda replied. "It's only natural. After
all, you must see that he was my father."

"A pretty father he was, too good for the girl he married. It's my
fault I didn't tell you long ago, but I just couldn't abide the
mention of him. He deserted me, no, us, cold, without a word--walked
out of the door one noon, taking his hat as quiet as natural, and
never came back. I never saw him again nor heard except through
lawyers. That was the kind of heart he had, and his sisters are
worse. I hadn't a decent speech of any kind out of them. The
Lowries," she managed to inject a surprising amount of contempt into
her pronouncement of that name. "What it was all about you nor any
sensible person would never believe:

"The house smelled a little of boiled cabbage. That's why he left
me, and you expected in a matter of a few months. He said in his
dam' frigid way that it had become quite impossible and took down
his hat."

"There must have been more," Linda protested, suppressing a mad
desire to laugh.