“That’s it,” he nodded, “the money. Well, it’s all ready and waiting for you in the bank. When you want it we’ll open an account for you, or buy a letter of credit with it, or make whatever arrangement seems best. Anyway, there it is whenever you want to go.”
“Oh, Uncle Jim!” she breathed. “And now what do you think’s happened?”
“What?” he asked with suddenly arrested attention. It was on his mind that startling things might be expected to happen in the Allen household at any moment.
“I’m not going!”
“You’re not going? Junie, don’t tell me that!”
The joy in his voice and eyes was transfiguring in its sudden radiance.
He left his chair and sat down on the end of the sofa near her feet, leaning toward her, pathetically eager to hear.
“I’ve changed my mind,”—a gleam of her old coquetry brightened her face. “Isn’t that one of the privileges of my sex?”
“What made you change it? Good Lord, dearie, I’m so glad!”
“I’ll tell you all about it. There are several threads to this story. In the first place Rosamund didn’t like it. She thought it was queer for me to go to Europe alone and leave father, and just before her wedding, too. She wouldn’t hear of my not being at the wedding. But the other reason was more the real one.”