"Don't worry: I'm going to tell you," she said, her grimness not relaxed. "There's matter enough, Virgil Adams. Matter enough to make me sick of being alive!"
With that, the markings on his brows began to emerge again in all their sharpness; the old pattern reappeared. "Oh, my, my!" he lamented. "I thought maybe we were all going to settle down to a little peace for a while. What's it about now?"
"It's about Alice. Did you think it was about me or anything for myself?"
Like some ready old machine, always in order, his irritability responded immediately and automatically to her emotion. "How in thunder could I think what it's about, or who it's for? Say it, and get it over!"
"Oh, I'll 'say' it," she promised, ominously. "What I've come to ask you is. How much longer do you expect me to put up with that old man and his doings?"
"Whose doings? What old man?"
She came at him, fiercely accusing. "You know well enough what old man, Virgil Adams! That old man who was here the other night."
"Mr. Lamb?"
