Datasets:
edwindvinas
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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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“Just for the fun of it?” suggested Valancy.
“Exactly,” said Cousin Georgiana unsuspiciously. “When there is so much
smoke there must be some fire. I was afraid he was a criminal when he
came here first. I _felt_ he had something to hide. I am not often
mistaken in my intuitions.”
“Criminal! Of course he’s a criminal,” said Uncle Wellington. “Nobody
doubts it”—glaring at Valancy. “Why, they say he served a term in the
penitentiary for embezzlement. I don’t doubt it. And they say he’s in
with that gang that are perpetrating all those bank robberies round the
country.”
“_Who_ say?” asked Valancy.
Uncle Wellington knotted his ugly forehead at her. What had got into
this confounded girl, anyway? He ignored the question.
“He has the identical look of a jail-bird,” snapped Uncle Benjamin. “I
noticed it the first time I saw him.”
“‘A fellow by the hand of nature marked,
Quoted and signed to do a deed of shame’,”
declaimed Uncle James. He looked enormously pleased over managing to
work that quotation in at last. He had been waiting all his life for
the chance.
“One of his eyebrows is an arch and the other is a triangle,” said
Valancy. “Is _that_ why you think him so villainous?”
Uncle James lifted _his_ eyebrows. Generally when Uncle James lifted
his eyebrows the world came to an end. This time it continued to
function.
“How do _you_ know his eyebrows so well, Doss?” asked Olive, a trifle
maliciously. Such a remark would have covered Valancy with confusion
two weeks ago, and Olive knew it.
“Yes, how?” demanded Aunt Wellington.
“I’ve seen him twice and I looked at him closely,” said Valancy
composedly. “I thought his face the most interesting one I ever saw.”
“There is no doubt there is something fishy in the creature’s past
life,” said Olive, who began to think she was decidedly out of the
conversation, which had centred so amazingly around Valancy. “But he
can hardly be guilty of _everything_ he’s accused of, you know.”
Valancy felt annoyed with Olive. Why should _she_ speak up in even this
qualified defence of Barney Snaith? What had _she_ to do with him? For
that matter, what had Valancy? But Valancy did not ask herself this
question.
“They say he keeps dozens of cats in that hut up back on Mistawis,”
said Second Cousin Sarah Taylor, by way of appearing not entirely
ignorant of him.
Cats. It sounded quite alluring to Valancy, in the plural. She pictured
an island in Muskoka haunted by pussies.
“That alone shows there is something wrong with him,” decreed Aunt
Isabel.
“People who don’t like cats,” said Valancy, attacking her dessert with
a relish, “always seem to think that there is some peculiar virtue in
not liking them.”
“The man hasn’t a friend except Roaring Abel,” said Uncle Wellington.
“And if Roaring Abel had kept away from him, as everybody else did, it
would have been better for—for some members of his family.”
Uncle Wellington’s rather lame conclusion was due to a marital glance
from Aunt Wellington reminding him of what he had almost forgotten—that
there were girls at the table.
“If you mean,” said Valancy passionately, “that Barney Snaith is the
father of Cecily Gay’s child, he _isn’t_. It’s a wicked lie.”
In spite of her indignation Valancy was hugely amused at the expression
of the faces around that festal table. She had not seen anything like
it since the day, seventeen years ago, when at Cousin Gladys’ thimble
party, they discovered that she had got—SOMETHING—in her head at
school. _Lice_ in her head! Valancy was done with euphemisms.
Poor Mrs. Frederick was almost in a state of collapse. She had
believed—or pretended to believe—that Valancy still supposed that
children were found in parsley beds.
“Hush—hush!” implored Cousin Stickles.
“I don’t mean to hush,” said Valancy perversely. “I’ve hush—hushed all
my life. I’ll scream if I want to. Don’t make me want to. And stop
talking nonsense about Barney Snaith.”
Valancy didn’t exactly understand her own indignation. What did Barney
Snaith’s imputed crimes and misdemeanours matter to her? And why, out
of them all, did it seem most intolerable that he should have been