But the change of mind came only with the springing up of the young man in the adjoining arbor.
"Aunt Fay, is that you?" he inquired, in an anxious voice, speaking the name with marked emphasis.
"Oh!" chirped the gray sparrow, flitting to the next doorway, "I must have counted wrong. I saw a young man alone, and—Then you are my nephew—Ronald."
She also threw stress upon the name and the relationship, and, though I knew nothing of the face that lurked behind a tissue veil, I became aware that the lady was an American.
"Funny thing," I said to myself. "They don't seem to have met before. She must be a long-lost aunt."
My neighbor would have ushered his relative into the arbor, but she lingered outside.
"Come, Tibe," she cried, with a shrill change of tone. "Here, Tibe, Tibe, Tibe!"
There was a sudden stir in the garden, a pulling of chairs closer to small tables, a jumping about of waiters, a few stifled shrieks in feminine voices, and a powerful tan-colored bulldog, with a peculiarly concentrated and earnest expression on his countenance, bounded through the crowd toward his mistress, with a fine disregard of obstacles. Evidently, if there was any dodging to be done, he had been brought up to expect others to do it; and I thought the chances were that he would seldom be disappointed.
