"And is he as nice as Mr. Wilson?"

"Very, _very_ nice."

Further lights were bursting in. The illumination momentarily staggered me.

"H'm. Dulcie, you will now attend to what I tell you."

"Yes, yes, Aunt Anne. I always do."

"Now, mind you don't make eyes at Mr. Wilson, who is Joan's friend. That is what horrid little cats of girls do, not what I expect of _you_.

Chickens draw people together in a way, ahem! you don't understand, but--you will later on."

"Like poetry does?" Dulcie hazarded.

"Just like poetry. And one thing more. Don't speak to Mr. Vavasour unless he speaks to you."

"No, no, Aunt Anne. I never do."

Once again I must compress. As the summer advanced, Gertrude, nose down in full cry on the track, unfolded to me a project which only needed my co-operation.

I reminded her that I never co-operated, but she paid no attention, and said she wished to send the children with Joan and Dulcie to the seaside for a month, while she watched over Jimmy during his annual visit to Harrogate. The children required a change.

I agreed.

She had thought of Lee on the Solent. (You will remember, reader, that Mr. Vavasour's place was near Lee.)

"Why Lee?" I said, pretending surprise. "Expensive and only ten miles away. No real change of climate. Send them to Felixstowe or Scarborough."

But Gertrude's mind was made up. She poured forth batches of adequate reasons. It must be Lee. Would I accompany the party as their guest?

Joan and Dulcie were rather too young to go into lodgings alone.

I saw at once that, under the circ.u.mstances, Lee was no place for me. I might get into hot water. I, so free now, might become entangled in the affairs of others, and might be blamed later on. I might find myself acting with duplicity or, to be more exact, I might be found out to be doing so.

I declined with regretful grat.i.tude. If it had been Felixstowe or Scarborough I would have taken charge with pleasure, but I always had rheumatism at Lee. Rheumatism was a very capricious ailment.

"It is, indeed," said Gertrude coldly.

"Send your old governess," I suggested, "the ancient Miss Jones who lives at Banff. You have her here every summer for a month. Kill two birds with one stone. Let her have her annual outing at Lee instead of here."

Gertrude was undeniably struck by my suggestion, though she found fault with it. As she began to come round to it I then raised objections to it. I reminded her that Miss Jones was as blind as a bat: that when she accompanied them to Scotland the year before she had mistaken the footman bathing for a salmon leaping. But Gertrude was of the opinion that Miss Jones's shortsightedness was no real drawback.

The expedition started, and I actually produced five pounds for Dulcie to spend on seaside attire. I considered it a good investment.

Before Gertrude departed with Jimmy for Harrogate she volunteered with a meaning smile that she understood Mr. Wilson bicycled over frequently to Lee.

"Ten miles is nothing," I said, "to a high principled poultry fancier."

"Now you know," she said archly, "why I did not wish to remove Dulcie to a great distance at this critical moment in her young life. I hear from Miss Jones, who writes daily, that there are shrimping expeditions and picnics with the children, strolls by moonlight without them."

Reader, I did not oblige that serpent to disgorge the fact that moonlight strolls are not taken by two women and one man. I knew as well as possible that Miss Jones had received a hint to give these two young men every opportunity. I thanked Providence that I had not got into that _galere_. I had been saved by the fixed principle of a life time to avoid action of any kind.

I had hardly begun to enjoy the month of solitude when it was over, and Gertrude and Jimmy returned from Harrogate, he very limp and depressed, as always after his cure, and sure that it had done him more harm than good.

The two girls came back from the Solent looking the picture of health; even Joan was almost pretty, beaming under her tan. Dulcibella, who did not tan, was ravishing. The children were a rich brown pink apparently all over, and the ancient Miss Jones was a jet-beaded ma.s.s of bridling grat.i.tude and self-importance.

Then, of course, the storm burst.

You and I, reader, know exactly what had happened. Dulcie had got engaged to Mr. Vavasour, and Joan to Mr. Wilson.

Dulcie came skimming down in the dusk the first evening to announce the event to me, her soft cheek pressed to mine. She said she wanted me to be the first to know.

_And Gertrude had said I could do nothing for her!_

She told me that at that very moment the blissful Joan was announcing her own betrothal to her parents.

Next morning Jimmy came down to see me. He generally gravitated to me if anything went wrong.

"We are in a hat up at the house," he said. "Joan has actually engaged herself to that oaf, Wilson. Infernal cheek on his part, I call it."

"You have had him hanging about for months," I said, "I expect he and Joan thought you approved."

"They did. They do. But that doesn't make it any better. Of course I said I would not allow it, and Joan was amazed and cried all night, and Gertrude is in a state of such nervous tension you can't go near her, and poor old Jones, who came back preening herself, is bathed in tears--and Gertrude says I have got to speak to Wilson at once. She always says things have got to be done at once."

He groaned, and sat down heavily on my low wall, crushing a branch of verbena.

"It's not as if I hadn't warned Gertrude," he went on. "I said to her several times 'I'm always catching my foot against Wilson,' and yet she would have him about the place. She as good as told me she thought he and Dulcie might make a match of it. But it's my opinion Dulcie never so much as looked at him. I told Gertrude so, but she only smiled, and said I was to leave it to her, and that it was in those confounded stars that Dulcie would marry almost at once. This is what her beastly stars have brought us to."

"She did tell me there was an early marriage for Joan, too, in her horoscope," I hazarded.

"Well, we had had thoughts, I mean Gertrude had, that young Vavasour came over oftener than he need. He's rather a bent lily, but of course he's an uncommonly good match. I should not have thought there was anything in it, myself, but Gertrude kept rubbing it in. That is why they went to Lee."

"You don't say so!"

"Yes, I do say so. But look how it has turned out."

"I think I ought to tell you--I'm so astonished that even now I don't know how to believe it--I only heard of it last night,--that Dulcie has accepted Mr. Vavasour."

For a moment Jimmy stared at me, and then he burst into shouts of laughter.

"Well done, Anne!" he said, rolling on my poor verbena. "Well done, Dulcie. That little slyboots. Thirty thousand a year. What a score. Who would have thought it, Anne! You look so remote and unworldly in your grey hair, st.i.tching away at your woolwork picture. But you've outwitted Gertrude. Well, I don't care what she says. I'm glad of any luck happening to Dulcie. She is not fit to struggle for herself in this hard world. But Gertrude will never forgive _you_, Anne. You may make up your mind to that."

"But what have I done?" I bleated. "Nothing. I'm as innocent as an unlaid egg."

"You may be, but she will never forgive you all the same," said Jimmy slowly rising, and brushing traces of verbena from his person. "Stupid people never forgive, and they always avenge themselves by brute force."

Old Miss Jones, bewildered and tearful, toddled down to see me, boring me to death with plans for leaving Banff and settling in Bournemouth with a married niece. Joan rushed down, boisterously happy, and confident that her father would give in; Jimmy, weakening daily, came down. Mr. Wilson called, modest and hopeful; Dulcie, and the children came down, Mr. Vavasour, a stooping youth, with starling eyes, and an intense manner, motored over.

_But Gertrude never came._