"Certainly, Aunt."
"Phillida does not deserve pampering enjoyment. I am consenting for your sake."
"Thank you, Aunt. I wonder, then, if you would mind if we stopped to see a show that I especially want to look over, for business reasons? We could come out on the theatre express; as we have done before, you remember?"
"Yes, but——"
"Thank you. I'll take good care of her. Good-bye."
The receiver was still talking when I hung up. There is no other form of conversation so incomparably convenient.
The train arrived within the half-hour. With the inrush of travelers, I sighted Phillida's sober young figure moving along the cement platform. She walked with dejection. Her gray suit represented a compromise between fashion and her mother's opinion of decorum, thus attaining a length and fulness not enough for grace yet too much for jauntiness. Her solemn gray hat was set too squarely upon the pale-brown hair, brushed back from her forehead. Her nice, young-girl's eyes looked out through a pair of shell-rimmed spectacles. She was too thin and too pale to content me.
When she saw me coming toward her, her face brightened and colored quite warmly. She waved her bag with actual abandon and her lagging step quickened to a run.
"Cousin Roger!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "Oh, how good of you to come!"
She gripped my hands in a candid fervor of relief and pleasure.