don’t

ought

you

“I know you don’t,” I answered, “and I’m sorry I said that.” And then I decided I’d better hear the story. Beside, I wanted to. So I told her to tell me all about what she knew of it, and she did.

It seems they have a room which they call “the winter room,” and this contains a cosy little alcove, lighted by a high window, which is remote and an ideal reading spot. And one day after Mrs. Crane got Uncle Frank’s letter, the letter about my coming, Mary Elinor happened to be there, reading. It was a book she had read before, and of course she knew what happened next, and so she wasn’t especially interested, and what her mother and father said sort of floated in her consciousness and rooted, she said, before she realized that she was listening. Then, since they hadn’t known she was there, she decided not to enlighten them. She knew that they would be shocked by her presence, and she assured me that she always tried to be considerate. And, she reasoned further, that since she had heard so much, almost involuntarily, there was no use stuffing up her ears, and beside, she was interested.

It was interesting, but I didn’t believe it--then.

was

“Ted,” Mrs. Crane had said (Doctor Crane’s first name is Theodore), “I want to give Natalie Page that bracelet, but--you know poor Nelly’s foolish fear of it bothers me.”

“Nonsense!” Doctor Crane answered, and Mary Elinor said she knew he was smoking, by the tight way he spoke.

“I suppose it is,” Mrs. Crane said, “isn’t it?”

“Why, of course it is. . . . Nothing the matter with that bracelet. My dear, how could it affect anything? . . . And as for poor Carter Page’s pneumonia” (Carter Page was my father, and he was an Admiral in the Navy), “he went off with that because of a severe climatic change, a bad sailing, and a weak heart. And of course Nelly was upset both physically and mentally by that.”

“But before,” said Mrs. Crane. “You know her little sister--the one who was killed in that Carrol County Hunt--thrown from a horse--well, she’d borrowed this bracelet and wore it that day.”

borrowed this bracelet and wore it 

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