“Please don’t make fun of Clifford. He does not pretend to be a saint, and I don’t like to hear you speak in that way of him!”
“Maurice! I didn’t think that you were like ‘Beano!’”
“Some way I didn’t like your tone when you spoke of Clifford. But I’m wrong to take it up so. Please forgive me, Maurice. Maybe you can’t help it if you don’t like Clifford.”
“I never said that I didn’t like him, sweet cousin; but he likes you too well, and I fear me that you like him. See? Plain jealousy.”
“Nonsense. There are a lot of interesting young men. I’m not in love with any one.”
“Some consolation, Ann. Ann, I heard a bit of gossip again yesterday. It is something that I heard last summer from one of the boys and worried over, then thought that I had traced it to a person who makes up anything, I’m told, out of whole cloth. But it came from another source this time, and I’m going to Father with it, how soon I haven’t made up my mind.”
“I heard something, but it came from an unreliable source. It seems so unbelievable, too. It is nothing to your discredit, Maurice.”
Ann added the last statement, for she thought that Maurice might refer to some other report, about some college escapade or affairs among the young folks.
Maurice was silent and they glided along without a word for some distance.
“Who told you and what was said?” he finally asked.
“It was Mrs. Lewis, that woman who, I am told, is such an indefatigable gossip; but I’d rather not speak of the matter first.”
“She seizes on an unpleasant report and holds on to it like a dog to a bone!” said Maurice. “I heard it first through her, when I came back from the West this summer, not from her directly, though. It is going to make considerable difference to me, Ann, whether it is true or not.”
“It would explain some things that I remember, too. And Ann, we would not be related, you know, though I think it would be all right for us to marry anyhow.”
“Let’s not talk of that, Maury, _please_!”
“All right, but you will admit that I like to think of some consolation!”
“I haven’t an idea that it is true, Maury. Why worry? When you think best, report it to your father, as you said you would. That is my way. I’d go to headquarters.”
“Do you suppose that I can believe headquarters?”