Both Rose and Sylvia regarded him with amazement, mixed with indignation.

“Why, Mr. Allen!” said Rose.  Then she added, haughtily:  “Mr. Allen, you take altogether too much upon yourself.  You have spoiled my candy, and you forget that you have not the least right to dictate to me what I shall or shall not eat.”

Sylvia also turned upon Horace.  “Home-made candy wouldn’t hurt her,” she said.  “Why, Mr. Allen, what do you mean?”

“Nothing.  I am very sorry,” said Horace.  Then he walked away without another word, and entered the house.  The girl and the woman stood looking at each other.

“What did he do such a thing for?” asked Rose.

“Goodness knows,” said Sylvia.

Rose was quite pale.  She began to look alarmed.  “You don’t suppose he’s taken suddenly insane or anything?” said she.

“My land! no,” said Sylvia.  “Men do act queer sometimes.”

“I should think so, if this is a sample of it,” said Rose, eying the trampled candy.  “Why, he ground his heel into it!  What right had he to tell me I should or should not eat it?” she said, indignantly, again.

“None at all.  Men are queer.  Even Mr. Whitman is queer sometimes.”

“If he is as queer as that, I don’t see how you have lived with him so long.  Did he ever make you drop a nice box of candy somebody had given you, and trample on it, and then walk off?”

“No, I don’t know as he ever did; but men do queer things.”

“I don’t like Mr. Allen at all,” said Rose, walking beside Sylvia towards the house.  “Not at all.  I don’t like him as well as Mr. James Duncan.”

Sylvia looked at her with quick alarm.  “The man who wrote you last week?”

“Yes, and wanted to know if there was a hotel here so he could come.”

“I thought—­” began Sylvia.

“Yes, I had begun the letter, telling him the hotel wasn’t any good, because I knew he would know what that meant—­that there was no use in his asking me to marry him again, because I never would; but now I think I shall tell him the hotel is not so bad, after all,” said Rose.

“But you don’t mean—­”

“I don’t know what I do mean,” said Rose, nervously.  “Yes, I do know what I mean.  I always know what I mean, but I don’t know what men mean making me drop candy I have had given me, and trampling on it, and men don’t know that I know what I mean.”  Rose was almost crying.

“Go up-stairs and lay down a little while before dinner,” said Sylvia, anxiously.

“No,” replied Rose; “I am going to help you.  Don’t, please, think I am crying because I feel badly.  It is because I am angry.  I am going to set the table.”

But Rose did not set the table.  She forgot all about it when she had entered the south room and found Henry Whitman sitting there with the Sunday paper.  She sat down opposite and looked at him with her clear, blue, childlike eyes.  She had come to call him Uncle Henry.