"Aunt Tommy is out," I said, to get the worst over. "I guess you like Aunt Tommy pretty well, don't you, Mr. Richmond?"

"Yes," said d.i.c.k softly.

"So do other men," I said--mysterious, as Jill had ordered me.

d.i.c.k thumped one of the sofa pillows.

"Yes, I suppose so," he said.

"There's a man in New York who just worships Aunt Tommy," I said. "He writes her most every day and sends her books and music and elegant presents. I guess she's pretty fond of him too. She keeps his photograph on her bedroom table and I've seen her kissing it."

I stopped there, not because I had said all I had to say, but because d.i.c.k's face scared me--honest, it did. It had all gone white, like it does in the pulpit sometimes when he is tremendously in earnest, only ten times worse. But all he said was,

"Is your Aunt Bertha engaged to this--this man?"

"Not exactly engaged," I said, "but I guess anybody else who wants to marry her will have to reckon with him."

d.i.c.k got up.

"I think I won't wait this evening," he said.

"I wish you'd stay and have a talk with me," I said. "I haven't had a talk with you for ages and I have a million things to tell you."

d.i.c.k smiled as if it hurt him to smile.

"I can't tonight, Jacky. Some other time we'll have a good powwow, old chap."

He took his hat and went out. Then Jill came flying in to hear all about it. I told her as well as I could, but she wasn't satisfied. If d.i.c.k took it so quietly, she declared, I couldn't have made it strong enough.

"If you had seen d.i.c.k's face," I said, "you would have thought I made it plenty strong. And I'd like to know what Aunt Tommy will say to all this when she finds out."

"Well, you didn't tell a thing but what was true," said Jill.

The next evening was d.i.c.k's regular night for coming, but he didn't come, although Jill and I went down the lane a dozen times to watch for him. The night after that was prayer-meeting night. d.i.c.k had always walked home with Aunt Tommy and us, but that night he didn't.

He only just bowed and smiled as he pa.s.sed us in the porch. Aunt Tommy hardly spoke all the way home, only just held tight to Jill's and my hands. But after we got home she seemed in great spirits and laughed and chatted with Father and Mother.

"What does this mean?" asked Jill, grabbing me in the hall on our way to bed.

"You'd better get another novel from the cook and find out," I said grouchily. I was disgusted with things in general and d.i.c.k in particular.

The three weeks that followed were awful. d.i.c.k never came near Owlwood. Jill and I fought every day, we were so cross and disappointed. Nothing had come out right, and Jill blamed it all on me. She said I must have made it too strong. There was no fun in anything, not even in going to church. d.i.c.k hardly thumped the pulpit at all and when he did it was only a measly little thump. But Aunt Tommy didn't seem to worry any. She sang and laughed and joked from morning to night.

"She doesn't mind d.i.c.k's making an a.s.s of himself, anyway, that's one consolation," I said to Jill.

"She is breaking her heart about it," said Jill, "and that's your consolation!"

"I don't believe it," I said. "What makes you think so?"

"She cries every night," said Jill. "I can tell by the look of her eyes in the morning."

"She doesn't look half as woebegone over it as you do," I said.

"If I had her reason for looking woebegone I wouldn't look it either,"

said Jill.

I asked her to explain her meaning, but she only said that little boys couldn't understand those things.

Things went on like this for another week. Then they reached--so Jill says--a climax. If Jill knows what that means I don't. But Pinky Carewe was the climax. Pinky's name is James, but Jill and I always called him Pinky because we couldn't bear him. He took to calling at Owlwood and one evening he took Aunt Tommy out driving. Then Jill came to me.

"Something has got to be done," she said resolutely. "I am not going to have Pinky Carewe for an Uncle Tommy and that is all there is about it. You must go straight to d.i.c.k and tell him the truth about the New York man."

I looked at Jill to see if she were in earnest. When I saw that she was I said, "I wouldn't take all the gems of Golconda and go and tell d.i.c.k that I'd been hoaxing him. You can do it yourself, Jill Gordon."

"You didn't tell him anything that wasn't true," said Jill.

"I don't know how a minister might look upon it," I said. "Anyway, I won't go."

"Then I suppose I've got to," said Jill very dolefully.

"Yes, you'll have to," I said.

And this finishes my part of the story, and Jill is going to tell the rest. But you needn't believe everything she says about me in it.

_Jill's Side of It_

Jacky has made a fearful muddle of his part, but I suppose I shall just have to let it go. You couldn't expect much better of a boy. But I am determined to re-describe Aunt Tommy, for the way Jacky has done it is just disgraceful. I know exactly how to do it, the way it is always done in stories.

Aunt Tommy is divinely beautiful. Her magnificent wealth of burnished auburn hair flows back in amethystine waves from her sun-kissed brow.

Her eyes are gloriously dark and deep, like midnight lakes mirroring the stars of heaven; her features are like sculptured marble and her mouth is like a trembling, curving Cupid's bow (this is a cla.s.sical allusion) luscious and glowing as a dewy rose. Her creamy skin is as fair and flawless as the inner petals of a white lily. (She may have a weeny teeny freckle or two in summer, but you'd never notice.) Her slender form is matchless in its symmetry and her voice is like the ripple of a woodland brook.

There, I'm sure that's ever so much better than Jacky's description, and now I can proceed with a clear conscience.

Well, I didn't like the idea of going and explaining to d.i.c.k very much, but it had to be done unless I wanted to run the risk of having Pinky Carewe in the family. So I went the next morning.

I put on my very prettiest pink organdie dress and did my hair the new way, which is very becoming to me. When you are going to have an important interview with a man it is always well to look your very best. I put on my big hat with the wreath of pink roses that Aunt Tommy had brought me from New York and took my spandy ruffled parasol.

"With your shield or upon it, Jill," said Jacky when I started. (This is another cla.s.sical allusion.)

I went straight up the hill and down the road to the manse where d.i.c.k lived with his old housekeeper, Mrs. Dodge. She came to the door when I knocked and I said, very politely, "Can I see the Reverend Stephen Richmond, if you please?"

Mrs. Dodge went upstairs and came right back saying would I please go up to the study. Up I went, my heart in my mouth, I can tell you, and there was d.i.c.k among his books, looking so pale and sorrowful and interesting, for all the world like Lord Algernon Francis in the splendid serial in the paper cook took. There was a Madonna on his desk that looked just like Aunt Tommy.

"Good evening, Miss Elizabeth," said d.i.c.k, just as if I were grown up, you know. "Won't you sit down? Try that green velvet chair. I am sure it was created for a pink dress and unfortunately neither Mrs. Dodge nor I possess one. How are all your people?"

"We are all pretty well; thank you," I said, "except Aunt Tommy.

She--" I was going to say, "She cries every night after she goes to bed," but I remembered just in time that if I were in Aunt Tommy's place I wouldn't want a man to know I cried about him even if I did.

So I said instead "--she has got a cold."