"Why?"
"Her door was open when I came by and I called to her. She didn't
answer, but, oh, what a look! What's in the air?"
And then Hunt noted the Duchess apart in her corner. "I say, Duchess--
what were Larry and Maggie rowing about?"
"Grandmother!" Larry exclaimed with a start. "I'd forgotten you were
here! You must have heard it all--go ahead and tell him."
"Tell him yourself," returned the Duchess.
Larry and Hunt took chairs, and Larry gave the gist of what he had
said about his decision to Barney and Old Jimmie and Maggie. The
Duchess, still motionless at her desk as she had been all during
Larry's scene with Old Jimmie and Barney, and then his scene with
Maggie, regarded her grandson with that emotionless, mummified face in
which only the red-margined eyes showed life or interest.
"So you're going to go straight, eh?" queried Hunt. The big painter
sat with his long legs sprawling in front of him, a black pipe in his
mouth, and looked at Larry skeptically. "You certainly did hand a jolt
to your friends who'd been counting on you. And yet you're sore
because they were sore at you and didn't believe in you."
"Did I say that I was sore?" queried Larry.
"No, but you're acting it. And you're sore at Maggie because she
didn't believe that you could make good or that you'd stick it out.
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