"It was a reg'lar young prince of a feller with grand eyes," Ann said afterward, dramatizing the occurrence to her old homekeeping mother, "and he took off his hat as he come up to Loviny as though she was somebody great." Miss Getchell's curious ears could not grasp Jack's low-spoken question:—
"Are you going out to dinner anywhere, Aunt Love?"
Miss Lovina's conscience would have done credit to any Puritan of them all, but Jack had said "are" instead of "were," and she considered that in a flash before responding heartily:
"Indeed I am not, Mr. Jack. You're just comin' home with me and I'm delighted. Wait one second till I speak to one o' my neighbors."
Jack suspected her as she turned back to Miss Getchell, but her evident pleasure in his arrival decided him not to press the question. He turned his back while she hurriedly and emphatically accosted her friend.
"I'm sorry it happens so, Ann, but"—
"Oh now, don't say you won't come, Loviny. Fetch the young man along and welcome."
"Hush, don't say a word. It is Mr. Van Tassel's son. You remember. I'll make it up to you sometime,—I mean you'll make it up to me. You see it can't be helped. Now don't coax me, that's a good girl; I can't possibly come, and don't be mad with me, Ann, you see just how it is," and Miss Getchell allowed herself to be twitched into dumbness by Lovina's anxious grasp upon her arm, and departed on her lonely way in a measure consoled by the consideration of two luscious mince pies which Miss Berry had sent her as a gift the day before.
"I'll bet a cookie she wishes she had 'em back now," she reflected as she looked after the erect, tall form moving away beside Miss Berry's stout figure. "I'm glad 't ain't me caught by a city feller like that on Christmas day without any decent dinner to give him."
But Miss Getchell and Miss Berry were two very different people. The latter, as she walked along trying with some preoccupation to talk to her guest, was filled with felicitation that Jack had chosen for his visit the day when each heart is most inclined to gentleness, and in the same breath she rejoiced that there were two roast chickens in the larder at home prepared in a moment of dubiousness regarding Ann Getchell's cooking. "If I don't relish my dinner, I'll have a good supper," Miss Lovina had thought when she roasted them, and now the most devout thanksgiving of the morning arose from her heart in consequence.