Page:Steadfast Heart.djvu/226

 When these were on the horizon Rainbow preferred to take shelter. It rather gloried in Lydia’s tantrums. Persons who have never lived in a community like Rainbow have no idea how far a young person like Lydia can go, nor what it means to be the Lydia Canfield of such a town…. Mrs. Bowen made no rejoinder; rather, she changed the subject abruptly.

“Hear about Clara Reynolds?” she asked generally of the assemblage.

“Sick?”

“Married. Her and John Fritch was married secret in Lansing yestiddy.”

“John Fritch!” exclaimed Lydia. “You don’t mean that young man at the hotel!”

“Him and no other,” said Mrs. Bowen impressively.

“What in the world can Clara have been thinking of? Why, nobody knows anything about this Mr. Fritch. He’s a foreigner or something, isn’t he? And somebody told me his father was a circus performer.”

“So they say.”

Lydia shook her head. “It doesn't seem possible. How a girl can marry a man like that, with no family—who has queer people like circus performers or actors or something, I can’t see. Why, the Reynolds family is related to Governor Wing, and Mrs. Reynolds was a Chadwick.”