fully away from him; but at his last words she came
a step nearer. "I'll tell him exactly what you say," she answered; and
then she asked suddenly in a firmer tone: "Have you heard anything more
of my aunt?"

He looked at her intently. "Why, yes. You hadn't mentioned her again, so
I thought you'd ceased to be interested. Would you like to see her?" he
demanded abruptly after a pause.

"How can I? I don't know where she is."

For a minute or two before replying he studied her closely. "I wish you
would let your hair grow out, Patty," he remarked at the end of his
examination, and there was a note of genuine feeling in his bantering.
"I remember how pretty you used to look as a little girl, with your hair
flying behind you like the mane of a pony."

"Let my hair alone. Do you know where my aunt is?"

He appeared to yield reluctantly to her insistence. "If you're so bent
on knowing--and, mind you, I tell you only because you make me--she
ain't so very far from where we are standing. I could take you to her in
ten minutes."

She looked at him as if she scarcely believed his words. "You mean that
she is in town?"

"Haven't you known me long enough to find out that I always mean what I
say?"

"Then you can take me to her now?"

He laughed shortly, and dug the end of his walking stick between the
pavement and the edge of the curbstone. "What do you reckon the Governor
would say to it?"

"I needn't tell him--not just yet, anyhow. But are you really and truly
sure that she is my mother's sister?"

"Well, they had the same parents, and I reckon that makes 'em sisters if
anything does. I knew 'em both out yonder in California, and I never
heard anybody suggest they weren't related."

"Why did she come here? Was it to see me?"

"Partly that, and partly--well, she's been pretty sick. I reckon she's
likely to go off at any time, and she wanted to be back where she was
born. She had pneumonia two years ago, and then again last winter. Her
lungs are about used up."

"Then, if I went to see her, I'd better go now, hadn't I?"

"It would be surer. Something may happen almost any day. That's why I
spoke to you."

"I am glad you did. If it isn't far, will you take me now?"

But instead of walking on with her, he dug the end of his stick more
firmly between the pavement and the curbstone. "I don't want to do you
any harm, Patty," he said gently at last. "It may give you a shock to
see her, you know. She's been through