"Very likely not," assented his cousin coolly, "but she'll endure you for my sake."
"I don't like being endured," he retorted, between fun and earnest.
"Besides, she's so much money"—
"You are not such a cad as to be afraid of her money, I hope."
"Not in one way, but don't you see now that she has so much, and I have lost Aunt Hannah's"—
"Really, Maurice," she interrupted brusquely, "you must learn not to speak your thoughts out like that! I'm not asking you to go to propose to Bee. You have the theological habit of taking things with too dreadful seriousness. Come with me for a call, and don't bother about consequences and possibilities."
Maurice blushed at his own folly in betraying his secret scruples, but his cousin spared him any farther teasing, and they went on their way peacefully. It seemed to him when he entered the stately Frostwinch house that it had somehow been transformed. Everything was much as it had been in the lifetime of Mrs. Frostwinch, yet to his fancy all looked fresher and more cheerful. He smiled to himself, feeling that the change must simply be the result of his knowledge that this was now the home of Berenice; yet even so he could not persuade himself that the alteration was not actual. He felt joyously alert as he followed Mrs. Staggchase to the library, where Bee was sitting with old Mrs. Morison.
He had never been in this apartment before. It was high, and heavily made, with an open fire on the hearth, and enough books to justify its name. Berenice came forward to meet them, and Mrs. Morison remained seated near the fire.
"I am so glad to see you, Mrs. Staggchase," Bee said cordially. "It is just one of those dreary days when it proves true courage to come out."
"And true friendship, I hope," the other answered, passing on to Mrs. Morison. "My dear old friend, I wish I could believe you are as glad to see me as I am to see you."
Berenice in the mean time gave her hand to Maurice graciously, but with a certain grave courtesy which he felt to put them upon a purely ceremonious footing.