"Are you?" he demanded, narrowing his eyes--a sign of unusually bad
humor.
"Am I what?"
"Going to marry him?"
"If you mean Jim," I said with dignity, "I haven't made up my mind yet.
Besides, he hasn't asked me."
Aunt Selina had been talking Woman's Suffrage in front of the fireplace,
but now she turned to me.
"Is this the vase Cousin Jane Whitcomb sent you as a wedding present?"
she demanded, indicating a hideous urn-shaped affair on the mantel. It
came to me as an inspiration that Jim had once said it was an ancestral
urn, so I said without hesitation that it was. And because there was a
pause and every one was looking at us, I added that it was a beautiful
thing.
Aunt Selina sniffed.
"Hideous!" she said. "It looks like Cousin Jane, shape and coloring."
Then she looked at it more closely, pounced on it, turned it upside down
and shook it. A card fell out, which Dallas picked up and gave her with
a bow. Jim had come out of the den and was dancing wildly around and
beckoning to me. By the time I had made out that that was NOT the vase
Cousin Jane had sent us as a wedding present, Aunt Selina had examined
the card. Then she glared across at me and, stooping, put the card in
the fire. I did not understand at all, but I knew I had in some way done
the unforgivable thing. Later, Dal told me it was HER card, and that
she had sent the vase to Jim at Christmas, with a generous check inside.
When she straightened from the fireplace, it was to a new theme, which
she attacked with her usual vigor. The vase incident was over, but she
never forgot it. She proved that she never did when she sent me two
urn-shaped vases with Paul and Virginia on them, when I--that is, later
on.
"The Cause in England has made great strides," she announced from the
fireplace. "Soon the hand that rocks the cradle will be the hand that
actually rules the world." Here she looked at me.
"I'm not up on such things," Max said blandly, having recovered some of
his good humor, "but--isn't it usually a foot that rocks the cradle?"
Aunt Selina turned on him and Mr. Harbison, who were standing together,
with a snort.
"What have you, or YOU, ever done for the independence of woman?" she
demanded.
Mr. Harbison smiled. He had been looking rather grave until then. "We
have at least remained unmarried," he retorted. And then dinner was
again announced.
He was to take me out, and he came across the room to where I sat
collapsed in a chair, and bent over me.
"Do you know," he said, looking down at me with his clear, disconcerting
gaze, "do you know that I have just grasped the situation? There was
such a noise that I did not hear your name, and I am only realizing now
that you are my hostess! I don't know why I got the impression that this
was a bachelor establishment, but I did. Odd, wasn't it?"