"Go out in the garden, dear," she said, impressively. "Behind the lilac bush. Quick!"
Away flew Auntie May, and I after her.
Now behind the lilac bush was my own particular domain. It was where I made my little mudpies in beautiful clam shells, and once I had had a caterpillar colony there, all pretty brown and yellow ones, and some few with neat tufted backs and red whiskers. And Jeremiah John, the wandering turtle, lived there. But no grown-up person ever ventured behind the lilac bush, so it was a surprise to find Burton Raymond, with cobwebs on his coat and a pale face, waiting for us.
"You!" Auntie May cried.
She said it almost in a shriek. She put her arms about him and clung to him.
"You!" she said again, with infinite content.
They didn't appear to mind me in the least, and they nearly killed Jeremiah John, who had gone to sleep in the sun.
Burton Raymond had seemed frightened at first; but when he saw how Auntie May cried and clung to him, his head went up, and his eyes grew dark, and he looked every inch a crusader. They talked together in whispers. He was persuading her to do something.
"Oh, no, no!" she cried.