Anne looked frightened. She ran into Bella's bath and wet the end of a
towel and when Hannah was changing Aunt Selina's collar--her concession
to evening dress--Anne wiped off the obvious places on the furniture.
She did it stealthily, but Aunt Selina saw her in the glass.
"What's that young woman's name?" she asked me sharply, when Anne had
taken the towel out to hide it.
"Anne Brown, Mrs. Dallas Brown," I replied meekly. Every one replied
meekly to Aunt Selina.
"Does she live here?"
"Oh, no," I said airily. "They are here to dinner, she and her husband.
They are old friends of Jim's--and mine."
"Seems to have a good eye for dirt," said Aunt Selina and went on
fastening her brooch. When she was finally ready, she took a bead purse
from somewhere about her waist and took out a half dollar. She held it
up before Hannah's eyes.
"Tomorrow morning," she said sternly, "You take off that white cap
and that fol-de-rol apron and that black henrietta cloth, and put on
a calico wrapper. And when you've got this room aired and swept, Mrs.
Wilson will give you this."
Hannah took two steps back and caught hold of a chair; she stared
helplessly from Aunt Selina to the half dollar, and then at me. Anne was
trying not to catch my eye.
"And another thing," Aunt Selina said, from the head of the stairs, "I
sent those towels over from Ireland. Tell her to wash and bleach the one
Mrs. What's-her-name Brown used as a duster."
Anne was quite crushed as we went down the stairs. I turned once,
half-way down, and her face was a curious mixture of guilt and hopeless
wrath. Over her shoulder, I could see Hannah, wide-eyed and puzzled,
staring after us.
Jim presented everybody, and then he went into the den and closed the
door and we heard him unlock the cellarette. Aunt Selina looked at
Leila's bare shoulders and said she guessed she didn't take cold
easily, and conversation rather languished. Max Reed was looking like a
thundercloud, and he came over to me with a lowering expression that I
had learned to dread in him.
"What fool nonsense is this?" he demanded. "What in the world possessed
you, Kit, to put yourself in such an equivocal position? Unless"--he
stopped and turned a little white--"unless you are going to marry Jim."
I am sorry for Max. He is such a nice boy, and good looking, too, if
only he were not so fierce, and did not want to make love to me. No
matter what I do, Max always disapproves of it. I have always had a
deeply rooted conviction that if I should ever in a weak moment marry
Max, he would disapprove of that, too, before I had done it very long.