Old Colonel Duane was bending his white head and smooth-shaven face over the little green sprouts in a garden plot when his granddaughter flung open the gate and rushed to him.
He raised himself slowly and looked around at her flushed cheeks. She pushed her hand through his arm and clutched it.
“Well, how did you get along, Milly? Does it beat fitting on gloves?”
“I’m so mortified, Grandpa,” was the rather breathless reply. “I had to be sent home.”
“Oh, come, now! You can stay home if that’s the case. Is Miss Frink an old pepper-pot as folks say?”
“No, no; she was kind to me, and I read her to sleep, which is what she wants; but I wasn’t sure what to do then, so when I met Mrs. Lumbard in the reception hall downstairs she asked me to sit down and I did. You remember my telling you about the white-haired lady who looks like a beauty of the French Court with big brown eyes? Well—there’s something queer—I don’t like her—and you know the Prince Charming dressing-gown I told you Miss Frink bought of me? Well, I told Mrs. Lumbard about it and she hadn’t known it.” Big tears began to form and run down the girl’s cheeks. “You know how we tell each other everything and show each other everything? Well, they don’t, for she didn’t know it, and she said it was for that man who stopped the runaway, and he’s still there and she has never seen him, and—and Miss Frink suddenly came downstairs, and said hereafter I was to go right home when I left her. Oh”—Millicent raised her handkerchief to her burning cheek—“very pleasantly she said it, but what will she think when she hears that I told about the dressing-gown? She’ll think I’m a common gossipy girl.” The tears flowed fast. “It’s worse than Damaris bobbing her hair. Perhaps I’ll get word to-morrow morning not to come, and I’ve given up Ross Graham’s—” The speaker’s voice encountered a large obstruction in her throat and stopped suddenly, while she mopped her eyes.
Her grandfather patted the hand clutching his arm and gave a comforting little laugh.
“Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill, child. I judge Miss Frink doesn’t care much for the French beauty. She didn’t like finding you together.”
“Do you think it might be that? Why, she is her niece.”
“Yes, but I’ve heard of such phenomena as lack of devotion between aunt and—grand-niece, isn’t it?”