He has shaved his mustache, and he's much browner and heavier, but he's Fred Miller--and why doesn't he come and speak to me ?" Out of much words, I gathered that she and Frosty were, to put it mildly, old friends.

She didn't just say there was an engagement between them, but she hinted it; his father had "had trouble"-- the vagueness of women!--and Edith's mama had turned Frosty down, to put it bluntly.

Frosty had, ostensibly, gone to South Africa, and that was the last of him.

Miss Edith seemed quite disturbed over seeing him there in Kenmore.

I told her that if Frosty wanted to stay in the background, that was his privilege and my gain, and she smiled at me vaguely and said of course it didn't really matter.
At supper-time our crowd got the storekeeper intimidated sufficiently to open his store and sell us something to eat.