Once again, as in her midnight talk with her niece, her face grew young and her eyes dim.
“Thank God!” she said, and dropping her spade she gave a gardening-gloved hand to each.
A sound of abundance of broken glass came from the far end of the garden, and down the path shortly afterward came Arthur.
“If you don’t look where you go,” he explained, “you’ll go into the cucumber-frames. Aunt Em, I sha’n’t garden any more. How many chrysanthemums have you killed?”
He looked plaintively at Aunt Em, then curiously at the two others. Suddenly he burst out laughing, and threw his hat in the air. It stuck in the mulberry-tree.
“Hurrah!” he cried. “Jack, old chap, how splendid! What lucky people you both are!”
“And what will Cousin Robert say?” asked Aunt Em. “He will think he was right all along.”
“He is at liberty to think precisely what he pleases,” said Jeannie, withdrawing her arm from Jack’s. “Oh, Jack, you don’t know about that; you can be told now. I must go and see the baby. And it is lunch time.”
Jack followed her with his eyes into the house, and turning to Arthur gave him a great hit in the chest, after the manner of a happy young man.
“You blazing fool!” he said, and Arthur understood, and smote him back.