Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/24

 "Not yet in," Miss Ellen answered from behind the tea-cups.

"I'm afraid we'll always be that kind of a family," Jane apologized, attacking her supper heartily.

The aunts were silent. Although they had had seven years of practice, they never could frame satisfactory answers to their niece's remarks. Before he died, Jane's father had said to them: "Don't bother with her too much; she's a safe kind of queer, I think." If this phrase had ever reached the ears of Jane's brothers, she would never have heard an end of it, but as it was, two conscientious old ladies guarded it in their memories and tried their best not to "bother" too much with Jane.

While they are waiting for Mark and Alan (the eldest Ingram son is always Mark) we might do well to look about this still old mansion. The green dusk veiled the portico as we entered; we did not see how sadly it stands in need of paint. But within this paneled room, gently lighted by oil-lamps, many little things all point toward a conviction that the Ingram fortunes cannot be what they were when the