“Oh, John,” she murmured, and then began to cry.
For a moment wounded pride struggled with John’s relief; but then a glorious vision of what this admission of Mary’s might mean to him swept away his pique.
“Read this,” he said, giving her Dora Bellairs’s letter, “and then we’ll have an explanation.”
Half an hour later Miss Bussey was roused from a pleasant snooze. John and Mary stood beside her, hand in hand. They wore brother and sister now—that was an integral part of the arrangement—and so they stood hand in hand. Their faces were radiant.
“We came to tell you, Auntie dear, that we have decided that we’re not suited to one another,” began Mary.
“Not at all,” said John decisively.
Miss Bussey stared helplessly from one to the other.
“It’s all right, Miss Bussey,” remarked John cheerfully. “We’ve had an explanation; we part by mutual consent.”
“John,” said Mary, “is to be just my brother and I his sister. Oh, and Auntie, I want to go with him to Cannes.”
This last suggestion, which naturally did not appear to any well-regulated mind to harmonize with what had gone before, restored voice to Miss Bussey.