“Tea, Mrs. Peyton? Oh, yes, indeed, thank you. Yes, two lemon and three sugar. And toasts,—and cakies,—oh, what good ones! What a tuck! Alma Mater doesn’t feed us like this! I say, Aunt Emily, after you are married, may I come to tea every day? And bring the fellows?”
“I’ll answer that,—you may,” said John Waring.
“And I’ll revise the answer,—you may, with reservations,” Mrs. Bates supplemented. “Now, Pinky, you’re a dear and a sweet, but you can’t annex this house and all its affairs, just because it’s going to be my home.”
“Don’t want to, Auntie. I only want you to annex me. You’ll keep the same cook we have at present, won’t you?”
He looked solicitously at her, over a large slice of toast and jam he was devouring.
“Maybe and maybe not,” Mrs. Peyton spoke up. “Cooks are not always anxious to be kept.”
“At any rate, we’ll have a cook, Pinky, of some sort,” his aunt assured him, and the boy turned to tease Helen Peyton, who was quite willing to be teased.
“I saw your beau today, Helen,” he said.
“Which one?” she asked placidly.
“Is there a crowd? Well, I mean the Tyler person. Him as hangs out at Old Salt’s. And, by the way, Uncle President,—yes, I am a bit previous on both counts, but you’ll soon have the honor of being both President and my uncle,—by the way, I say, Bob Tyler says there’s something in the wind.”