CHAPTER XXVII

AMZI'S PERFIDY

In accommodating himself to the splendors of the enlarged bank room,
Amzi had not abandoned his old straw hat and seersucker coat, albeit the
hat had been decorated with a dab of paint by some impious workman, and
the coat would not have been seriously injured by a visit to the
laundry.

Amzi was observing the new facade that had been tacked onto the
building, when Phil drove up in the machine. This was the afternoon of
the 3d of July. Phil and her father were camping for a week in their old
haunt in Turkey Run, and she had motored into town to carry Amzi to his
farm, where he meant to spend the Glorious Fourth in the contemplation
of the wheat Fred had been harvesting.

Phil had experienced a blow-out on her way to town, a fact to which the
state of her camping clothes testified.

"Thunder!" said Amzi; "you look as though you had crawled halfway in."

"A naughty nail in a bridge plank was the sinner," she explained.

She jumped out and was admiring the alterations, which had eliminated
the familiar steps to the old room, when Mrs. Waterman emerged from a
neighboring shop.

"You dear Phil!" she cried effusively. "I've been wanting to see you for
_weeks_!"

Her aunt caught and held the brown hand Phil had drawn from her battered
gauntlet.

"Father and I are out at the Run," Phil explained.

These were the first words she had exchanged with either of her aunts
since Christmas. She was not particularly interested in what her Aunt
Josephine might have to say, though somewhat curious as to why that
lady should be saying anything at all.

"I can't talk here," Mrs. Waterman continued, seeing that Amzi lingered
in the bank door. "But there are things I want to discuss with you,
Phil, dear."

Main Street is hot on July afternoons; and Phil was impatient to get
back to the cool hollows of the Run.

"Oh, any time, Aunt Josie," she replied hastily.

"It's only fair--to myself, and to Fanny and to Kate, for me to say to
you that we never meant--we never had the slightest intention--in regard
to your dear mother--"

"Oh, don't trouble about that!" said Phil. "Mamma never minded! And
please excuse me; Amy's waiting."

She nodded good-bye, and walked through the bank to the new directors'
room where Amzi was subjecting himself to the breezes of an electric
fan.

"Indian!"

"I haven't mussed you," observed Phil, placing her gloves on the new
mahogany table, "since you sta