“There was Crothers,” he was saying.  “He’s an architect, and he’s doing good work.  He never had Joe’s boldness, but he always had a fine sense of things, and at least he has stuck to his ideals.  He could do more to bring Joe back than any other man I know.”

“Then we must get him!”

“That will be hard.”

“Why will it?”

“Because some years ago I tried to get Crothers into our firm.  The two of us together might have kept Joe from the mere money jobs and made it a firm to be proud of.  Crothers was ready to come in, and I had nearly succeeded in bringing Joe to agree to it.”

“Then what was the matter?”

“Your sister.  Joe had told her he was thinking of some move in his business which would keep him poor awhile.  And she flew into quite a rage.  That was another time she sent for me.”  Nourse leaned grimly back in his chair.  “She told me that if I ruined her husband’s ‘career,’ as she called it, she’d break us apart once and for all.  She wouldn’t have Crothers in the firm—­not only because it meant money lost, but because Crothers’ wife had turned her down.”  Ethel looked at him sharply.

“Oh—­he has a wife,” she said.

“Yes, and she wasn’t your sister’s kind.  She was a college woman who wanted to be a great painter—­and when the painting petered out, she shut her jaw and said, ’Never mind.  If I can’t paint landscapes I can make them.’  And she took up landscape gardening.  She married Burt Crothers soon after that, but she stuck to her work and in course of time it fitted in with her husband’s.  He and Sally have struggled along up-hill, and though they’ve never made much money they’ve had a lot of fun out of life.”

“She sounds so nice,” Ethel hungrily murmured.

“Oh, yes, she’s nice enough,” he said, “until you go against her.  Then Sally gets mad, and stays that way.  And she got that way,” he added, “when we turned her husband down.  She hadn’t liked your sister.  In fact, when Joe married and brought his wife and the Crothers together, it wasn’t a go.  She called your sister ‘hopeless.’  And when Joe’s wife came back at her by keeping Crothers out of our firm, then war was declared.”

Nourse broke off and looked at Ethel.

“So you see what you’re up against,” he said.  “Yes, I see,” said Ethel.  At every door to her husband’s youth, Amy seemed to be barring the way.  She gave an impatient little shrug.  “If I could only show them!”

“What?”

“That I’m different!  And the hole I’m in!  And what it is I want in Joe! . . .  Can’t you go and talk to them?” There was impatience again in her eyes.  He saw it and smiled wearily.

“You think I’m mighty weak,” he said, “with not much fight left in me.  You’re right, I guess.  But you don’t know what I’ve been through in the last seven years.  I stuck to Joe—­and they didn’t like that.  Sally said I had knuckled down to Joe’s wife.  So she hasn’t asked me there in years.  And if I were to go to her now, I’m afraid my opinion of you wouldn’t count.”