you a full five minutes. I
don't wait for every one, I would have you know. Come here and give an
account of yourself."

The young man bent and softly touched her cheek with his lips.

She put out her hand and let it linger affectionately in his as he
dropped into the chair beside her.

"I can't begin to tell you how glad I am to see you, Bob," she went on,
in a voice soft and exquisitely modulated. "We had no idea you were on
the Cape. But for that jeweler's stupidity we should have thought you
had gone west long ago. Considering what good friends you and Roger
are, you are the worst of correspondents; and you never write to me."

"I know it," owned Robert Morton with disarming honesty. "It's beastly
of me."

"No, dear. On the contrary it is very like a man," contradicted Madam
Lee with a pretty little laugh. "However, I am not going to scold you
about it now. I have seen too many men in my day. First let me pour
your tea. Then you shall tell me all that you have been doing. I hear
you are visiting a new aunt whom you have just unearthed."

"Yes."

"How do you like her?"

Bob chuckled at the characteristic directness of the question.

"Very much indeed."

"That's nice. Since relatives are not of our choosing, it is pleasant
to find they are not bores."

Again the young man smiled.

"And this old gentleman for whom she keeps house--what of him?"

It was plain Madam Lee had all the facts well in mind.

As best he could Bob sketched Willie in a few swift strokes.

"Humph! An interesting old fellow. I should like to see him,"
declared Madam Lee when the narrative was done. "And so you are
working on this motor-boat with him?"

"Yes."

"How long have you been here?"

"Ten days."

"And when do you go back to your family?"

"I don't quite know," hesitated the big fellow. "There is still a
great deal to do on this invention we are working at."

His companion eyed him shrewdly.

"And the girl--where does she live?" she asked, reaching for Bob's cup.

He colored with surprise.

"The girl?" he repeated, disconcerted.

"Of course there is a girl," went on the woman.

"What makes you think so?"

"Oh, Bob, Bob! Isn't there always a girl on every young man's horizon?"

"I suppose so--generally speaking," he confessed with a laugh.

"Suppose we abandon the abstract term and come down to this girl in
particular," his interrogator said.

"Why are you so sure there is one?" he he