Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/270

 look as long as she liked, and a long look preceded every stroke.

Presently she paused, opening her eyes wider and holding aloft her brush. "There will be a bride's-maid," she said.

"The deuce!" he thought. "That didn't end it!" But he said nothing aloud.

"Guess. who!"

"Why, how should I——?"

"Guess!" she cried peremptorily, in a tone of bitter derision. "You won't? Well, it's Carolyn—our poor, silly Carolyn! And what do you suppose she has started in to do? She is writing an epitha—an epi-thal——"

"——amium," contributed Cope. "An epithala-rnium."

"Yes, an epithala-mium!" repeated Hortense, with an outburst of jarring laughter. "Isn't she absurd! Isn't she ridiculous!"

"Is she? Why, it seems to me a delicate attention, a very sweet thought." If Carolyn could make anything out of Amy—and of George—why, let her do it.

"You like her poetry!" cried Hortense in a high, strained voice. "You enjoy her epithalamiums, and her—sonnets "

Cope flushed and began to grow impatient. "She is a sweet girl," he said; "and if she wishes to write verse she is quite within her rights."

"'Sweet'! There you go again! 'Sweet'—twice. She ought to know!"