't listen to her. I was
watching Charles Edward and Aunt Elizabeth, and saying to myself
that mother'd want me to sit still and meet Aunt Elizabeth when she
came--"like a good girl," as she used to say to me when I was little and
begged to get out of hard things. Alice went on talking and gasping.

"Peg," she said, "he's perfectly splendid--Dr. Denbigh is."

"Yes, dear," said I, "he's very nice."

"I've adored him for years," said Alice. "I could trust him with my
whole future. I could trust him with yours."

Then I laughed. I couldn't help it. And Alice was hurt, for some reason,
and got up and held her head high and went into the house. And Aunt
Elizabeth came up the drive, and that is how she found me laughing. She
had on a lovely light-blue linen. Nobody wears such delicate shades as
Aunt Elizabeth. I remember, one day, when she came in an embroidered
pongee over Nile-green, father groaned, and grandmother said: "What is
it, Cyrus? Have you got a pain?" "Yes," said father, "the pain I always
have when I see sheep dressed lamb fashion." Grandmother laughed, but
mother said: "Sh!" Mother's dear.

This time Aunt Elizabeth had on a great picture-hat with light-blue
ostrich plumes; it was almost the shape of her lavender one that Charles
Edward said made her look like a coster's bride. When she bent over me
and put both arms around me the plumes tickled my ear. I think that was
why I was so cross. I wriggled away from her and said: "Don't!"

Aunt Elizabeth spoke quite solemnly. "Dear child!" she said, "you are
broken, indeed."

And I began to feel again just as I had been feeling, as if I were in a
show for everybody to look at, and I found I was shaking all over, and
was angry with myself because of it. She had drawn up a chair, and she
held both my hands.

"Peggy," said she, "haven't you been to the hospital to see that poor
dear boy?"

I didn't have to answer, for there was a whirl on the gravel, and Billy,
on his bicycle, came riding up with the mail. He threw himself off his
wheel and plunged up the steps as he always does, pretended to tickle
his nose with Aunt Elizabeth's feathers as he passed behind her, and
whispered to me: "Shoot the hat!" But he had heard Aunt Elizabeth asking
if I were not going to see that poor dear boy, and he said, as if he
couldn't help it:

"Huh! I guess if she did she wouldn't get in. His mother's walking up
and down front of the hospital when she ain't with him, and she's g