n would
probably understand him better. And I feel that the care of this big
place is too much for me. I would prefer to go to my own old home. If
you had married long ago, as you should, Walter, James would have had
a mother and some cousins to play with. I have always been of this
opinion."

Uncle Walter frowned and got up.

"Just because one woman played you false is no good reason for
spoiling your life," went on Aunt Augusta severely. "I have kept
silence all these years but now I am going to speak--and speak
plainly. You should marry, Walter. You are young enough yet and you
owe it to your name."

"Listen, Augusta," said Uncle Walter sternly. "I loved a woman once. I
believed she loved me. She sent me back my ring one day and with it a
message saying she had ceased to care for me and bidding me never to
try to look upon her face again. Well, I have obeyed her, that is
all."

"There was something strange about all that, Walter. The life she has
since led proves that. So you should not let it embitter you against
all women."

"I haven't. It's nonsense to say I'm a woman-hater, Augusta. But that
experience has robbed me of the power to care for another woman."

"Well, this isn't a proper conversation for a child to hear," said
Aunt Augusta, recollecting herself. "Jims, go out."

Jims would have given one of his ears to stay and listen with the
other. But he went obediently.

And then, the very next day, the dreaded something happened.

It was the first of August and very, very hot. Jims was late coming to
dinner and Aunt Augusta reproved him and Jims, deliberately, and with
malice aforethought, told her he thought she was a nasty old woman. He
had never been saucy to Aunt Augusta before. But it was three days
since he had seen Miss Avery and the Black Prince and Nip and he was
desperate. Aunt Augusta crimsoned with anger and doomed Jims to an
afternoon in the blue room for impertinence.

"And I shall tell your uncle when he comes home," she added.

That rankled, for Jims didn't want Uncle Walter to think him
impertinent. But he forgot all his worries as he scampered through the
Garden of Spices to the beech tree. And there Jims stopped as if he
had been shot. Prone on the grass under the beech tree, white and cold
and still, lay his Miss Avery--dead, stone dead!

At least Jims drought she was dead. He flew into the house like a mad
thing, shrieking for Martha. Nobody answered. Jims recollected, with a