"For mercy sake, what IS the matter with you?" demanded Kate,
ripping a strand of hair in sudden irritation.
"Oh, something lovely!" answered her sister, knowing that this was
her chance to impart the glad tidings herself; if she lost it,
Agatha would get the thrill of Kate's surprise. So Nancy Ellen
opened her drawer and slowly produced and set upon her bureau a
cabinet photograph of a remarkably strong-featured, handsome young
man. Then she turned to Kate and smiled a slow, challenging
smile. Kate walked over and picked up the picture, studying it
intently but in growing amazement.
"Who is he?" she asked finally.
"My man!" answered Nancy Ellen, possessively, triumphantly.
Kate stared at her. "Honest to God?" she cried in wonderment.
"Honest!" said Nancy Ellen.
"Where on earth did you find him?" demanded Kate.
"Picked him out of the blackberry patch," said Nancy Ellen.
"Those darn blackberries are always late," said Kate, throwing the
picture back on the bureau. "Ain't that just my luck! You
wouldn't touch the raspberries. I had to pick them every one
myself. But the minute I turn my back, you go pick a man like
that, out of the blackberry patch. I bet a cow you wore your pink
chambray, and carried grandmother's old blue bowl."
"Certainly," said Nancy Ellen, "and my pink sun-bonnet. I think
maybe the bonnet started it."
Kate sat down limply on the first chair and studied the toes of
her shoes. At last she roused and looked at Nancy Ellen, waiting
in smiling complaisance as she returned the picture to her end of
the bureau.
"Well, why don't you go ahead?" cried Kate in a thick, rasping
voice. "Empty yourself! Who is he? Where did he come from? WHY
was he IN our blackberry patch? Has he really been to see you,
and is he courting you in earnest? -- But of COURSE he is!
There's the lilac bush, the lawn-mower, the house to be painted,
and a humdinger dress. Is he a millionaire? For Heaven's sake
tell me --"
"Give me some chance! I did meet him in the blackberry patch.
He's a nephew of Henry Lang and his name is Robert Gray. He has
just finished a medical course and he came here to rest and look
at Hartley for a location, because Lang thinks it would be such a
good one. And since we met he has decided to take an office in
Hartley, and he has money to furnish it, and to buy and furnish a
nice house."
"Great Jehoshaphat!" cried Kate. "And I bet he's got wings, too!
I do have the rottenest luck!"
"You act for all the world as if it were a foregone conclusion
that if you had been here, you'd have won him!"