"I am glad I didn't break down, anyway," she replied, "for when I touched the piano my heart seemed in my mouth."
"Yes, and in your voice, too," he replied with pride, "and that is what carried us all away."
For an hour they discussed the Nasons, while Albert noticed his sister avoided any mention of Frank, and then he said: "Well, sis, which of the rents we have looked at do you think I best engage and when will you be ready to move?"
Alice was silent and for a few minutes she pursed her lips and looked at the chilly shipwreck scene near her as if it contained a revelation.
"I am not so sure," she answered finally, "that we should make the change at present. If I were certain your beautiful waif of the sea would adhere to her filial resolution, it would be different, but I am not. If you secure this legacy for her that you told me about and she donates it to those old people, as you say she intends to, why the next thing will be an invitation to my dear brother's wedding, and that is one reason why I hesitate to make this change. Another is that I do not think it would be good for Aunt Susan. She says she is ready and willing, but when she has left all the associations of her life behind, she will just sit and grieve her poor old heart away in silence."
Albert did not and could not answer all these surmises, and to a certain extent he felt that his sister was right. He certainly meant to coax Telly to marry him, even if she insisted on spending most of her time where she felt her duty called her. Then he had felt all along that Alice might be persuaded to become one of the Nason family, though his Thanksgiving visit had about dispelled that idea. As for Aunt Susan, if the proposed change was not likely to be a permanent one, it would not be best to make it at all. Deliberating thus he sat in silence for a time, and leisurely puffed smoke rings in the air as he studied the ceiling. Finally an idea came to him.
"My dear sister," he said, "have you considered or do you consider Frank in your calculations? and if so, where does he come in, may I ask?"
Alice's blue eyes assumed an expression like unto a pansy, and her face the placidity of a mill-pond as she answered, "I had quite forgotten his existence!"