Highly flattered, Aunt Sally rose to lead the girls indoors to the sunny room where she kept her plants. While they were admiring them, she asked them to sit down and rest a while and talk—an invitation they accepted with great alacrity. At length, after a detailed account of the health and affairs of her entire family, Phyllis craftily led the conversation back to Aunt Sally herself.
“And are you alone now, Aunt Sally, or is your sister still with you? I heard she was going back to Ohio.”
“Yes, she’s gone and I’m alone,” sighed Aunt Sally; “at least,—I’m not quite alone. I have a boarder at present.”
“Oh, have you!” exclaimed Phyllis, guilefully, as if it were all news to her. “Why, that’s very nice. I hope the boarder will stay a long while. It will be some company for you.”
“Well, I dunno how long she’ll stay, and she ain’t much company for me, I must confess!” admitted Aunt Sally, with a somewhat worried air. “The truth is, I can’t exactly make her out.”
This was precisely the line that Phyllis wished her to take, yet even now caution must be observed or Aunt Sally might shy away from it.
“Oh, it’s a lady then!” remarked the artful Phyllis.
“Well, no, it ain’t exactly a lady—it’s a young girl ’bout the age of you two, I should guess.”
“Still, I don’t see why she shouldn’t be company for you, even so,” argued Phyllis, quite as if she were still completely in the dark as to this new boarder.
“The reason she ain’t much company,” went on Aunt Sally, “is because—well, I don’t know as I ought to say it, but I guess she thinks she’s too sort of—high-toned to ’sociate with the person who keeps her boarding-house!” Aunt Sally laughed, an amused, throaty little chuckle at this, and then the worried frown came back.