ppeared--Heaven knows where! I've not seen him
for weeks. Nor did he condescend to write me--as I must say you
did--and very good of you too!" Whether Aunt Agatha was crying because
her mother was stout and eruptively lachrymose, or because Diane's hair
was still where it belonged, or because Carl was missing, Diane could
not be sure.

Aunt Agatha puffed presently to a seat by the fire, with hair and hat
awry, and dropped her hand bag.

"Johnny," she said severely, "don't stare so. I'm sorry of course that
I made you drop the kettle when I came, I am indeed, but I'm here and
there's the kettle--and that's all there is to it."

"Of course it is!" exclaimed Diane, kissing her heartily. "And I'm
mighty glad to see you, Aunt Agatha, tears and all!"

There was some little difficulty in persuading Aunt Agatha of the truth
of this, but she presently removed her hat, narrowly escaped dropping
it into the fire, and consigned it, along with the athletic hand bag,
to Johnny.

Now Diane with a furtive glance at Philip's camp, had been hostilely
considering the discouraging effect of Aunt Agatha's presence upon the
rival camper. That Aunt Agatha would presently discern degenerative
traces of criminality in his face by reason of his reprehensible
proximity to her niece's camp, Diane did not doubt. That the aggrieved
lady would call upon him within a day or so and air her rigid notions
of propriety and convention, was well within the range of probability.
Wherefore--

Aunt Agatha broke plaintively in upon her thoughts.

"If you would only listen, Diane!" she complained. "I've spoken three
times of your grandfather's old estate and dear knows you ought to
remember it--"

"I beg your pardon, Aunt!" stammered the girl sincerely.

"Certainly," said Aunt Agatha with dignity, "I deserve some attention.
What with the dark, gloomy rooms of the house and the cobwebs and
cranky spiders--and the people of St. Augustine believing it to be
haunted--so that I could scarcely keep a servant--and green mould in
the cellar--and a croquet set--and waiting down South when I distinctly
promised to go back with the Sherrills in March--I take it very hard of
you, Diane, to be so absent-minded. Ugh! How dark the lake has grown
and the wind and the noise of the water. There's hardly a star.
Diane, I do wonder how you stand it. The shore looks like bands of
mourning crepe. And in the midst of it all, Diane, there in St.
Augustine, the