No others of our party were yet in sight. As I walked slowly back towards Robert, going through a motherly heart-ache on behalf of my boy, Maimie suddenly emerged from some trees, and flew rather than ran towards me.
“Where are the others?” I asked, surprised at her being alone, as well as struck by her crimson cheeks and bright eyes.
“Oh, they are somewhere,” she said breathlessly.
“I have not seen Cherry and the boys for some time. Cress is coming—and I don’t know where Jack is. Jack ran away from us, and I ran away from Cress. O please, Aunt Marion, I want so much to tell you something.”
“Tell me now,” I said, and I drew her arm within my own. “We will go for a little walk along the avenue. Uncle Robert is asleep, you see.”
She held my arm tightly, clinging with the air of one who needed protection.
“It has been such nonsense,” she said, breathless still. “I want to tell you everything at once, and then you won’t have any false ideas about me,—mistaken ideas, I mean. For indeed it has not been my fault. I never dreamt of such a thing. Why, I’m only seventeen to-day.”
“Yes, Maimie,” I said anxiously.
“Cress has been so absurd all the afternoon,—wanting to be by side, and trying to throw poor Jack into the shade. So I talked more to Jack than to him, and that, I suppose, vexed Cress. And at last it came to—to—I hardly know how to explain. It would take so long to tell exactly all that passed. But Cress said something about my being by-and-by 'his little wife.’ Jack laughed, and then Cress fired up, and said Jack might laugh if he chose, but it was no laughing matter, for I should be his wife.”
“Rather cool of Cress,” I said soothingly, for Maimie trembled like a leaf.