"I am so glad it is you," she insisted. "I was sorry the train could not be later; I wished, almost, it would never get in—and all the time it was you who were waiting for me!"
"It was, and now you are about to share an orgy," I told her. "I have your mother's permission to take you to dinner, Miss Knox."
"Here? In town? Just us?"
"Yes. And afterward we will take in any show you fancy. How does that strike you?"
She gazed up at me, absorbing the idea and my seriousness. To my dismay, she grew pale again.
"I—I really believe it will keep me from just dying."
I pretended to think that a joke. But I recognized that my little cousin was on the sloping way toward a nervous breakdown.
"No baggage?" I observed. "Good! I hope you did not eat too much luncheon. This will be an early dinner."
She waited to take off the spectacles and put them in her little bag.
"I do not need them except to study, but I didn't dare meet Mother without them," she explained. "No; I could not eat lunch, or breakfast either, Cousin Roger. Nor much dinner last night! Oh, if you knew how I dread—the grind! I should rather run away."