"No," said Miss Ocky grimly, "but I'm beginning to."
They left it at that and withdrew from the dining-room. From his inconspicuous post near the sideboard, Bates followed the retreating figure of Miss Ocky with admiring and grateful eyes. Here, he told himself, was the old Miss Ocky coming to life again, and his heart rejoiced to think that Simon was in a fair way to get back as good as he gave. The spirit of the Copleys—aye, they had it, every one of them, if only they would show it now and then!
Lucy Varr departed for the kitchen, possibly to caution the cook against undue ostentation at dinner, and Copley, obeying an imperious glance from a pair of gray eyes, followed his aunt to the veranda. She led the way to one end of it, and there turned the corner into an ell that had been screened and glassed against the mosquitoes of summer and the frosts of winter. With comfortable wicker chairs and quantities of soft cushions, it was a cosy nook that had become Miss Ocky's favorite haunt for reading or writing.
She ousted a magnificent, smoky-blue Angora who, catlike, had decided the best was none too good for him, seated herself and waved Copley to another chair.
"I had a talk with Sheila this morning," she announced.
The young man's face had been flushed and dark, but now, at the mention of Sheila's name, it lighted quickly. He had been acutely embarrassed during the exchange of courtesies between his father and his aunt, and he had felt a quick resentment at the innuendo she had flung at him and which he had by no means missed, but these passing moods vanished in favor of happier emotions.
"I wondered if you really would! But, say, Aunt Ocky—you surely didn't have the nerve to mention your elopement scheme, did you?"
"I certainly did. My nerve is a very superior article. I wish to goodness I could graft a piece of it onto your backbone."
"Oh. Can't a fellow be sensible, Aunt Ocky, without being accused of spinelessness? However, for the love of Mike, tell me what she said! She turned it down hard, of course."
"She did not, though it was obvious that she would have preferred to hear it from your own lips. Naturally. At any rate, when I first got there I broached the subject tactfully—"