CHAPTER XXXVI
I
Ashley, Vermont, May, 1904.
Horace Allen's cousin was astonished to the limit of astonishment by the news, and cried out accusingly, "Why, I thought the other time it was only because Flora wanted to go. I thought you thought it would put you on the shelf altogether. I thought you hated it."
Horace considered this, sitting heavily on a bench while cousin Hetty pruned a near-by rose-bush, rigorously. Although she did not break in on his silence with a, "Well?" or, "Did you hear what I said?" she made him quite aware that she was relentlessly waiting for his answer.
"Well, I did," he admitted finally, "and I do yet. And it did put me on the shelf. That's all I'm good for now. It's because of my experience in Bayonne they want me to take charge of the Paris office."
"You don't have to go if they do," she pointed out; and this as she expected, brought out the real reason.
"Those four years in France have spoiled me for living here," he said and awaited doggedly her inevitable cry of amazement.
"You!" She stood up from her shorn rose-bush, her huge shears in one clumsily-gloved hand, a large thorned spray in the other, "Well for goodness' sake, how?"
He was in no haste to answer this either, meditating silently, the spring sun pouring an incongruous flood of golden young light on the sagging heaviness of his middle-aged face. Cousin Hetty let him alone again, and went on with the ruthless snip! clash! of her great shears.
When he rose again to the surface, it was with a two-fold explanation.
"Everybody that's worth anything over there has learned
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