“Do you think you’d be happy in town, Aunt Mary?” Jack yelled; “I mean if you lived there right along?”
“I don’t see how I could be anythin’ else. I don’t see how anyone could be anythin’ else. I want a nice house with a criss-cross iron gate in front of it an’ an automobile. An’—I don’t want you to say nothin’ about this to her jus’ yet—but I’m goin’ to keep Granite to look after everythin’ for me. I don’t ever mean to let Granite go again. Never. Not for one hour.”
Jack smiled. He felt as if Fate was playing into his hands.
“I want you to live with me,” Aunt Mary continued, “an’ I want the house big enough so’s Clover an’ Mitchell an’ Burnett can come whenever they feel like it and stay as long as they like. I don’t want any house except for us all together. Oh, my! Seems like I can’t hardly wait!”
She leaned back and shut her eyes in a sort of impatient ecstasy of joys been and to be.
Jack reached forward to get a cigarette from the box on the table at the bedside.
“Do you smoke now, Aunt Mary?” he inquired, as he took a match.
“No, Granite does.”
“Janice does!” he repeated, quickly knitting his brows.
“Yes, she does it for me—I’m so happy smellin’ the smell. They made her a little sick at first but she took camphor and now she don’t mind. Not much—not any.”