“Here you are, Atlantic. Here is Midvale,” went on the voice of the operator at central.
“Hello! Is that you Aunt Crete? This is Luella,” came another girl’s strident voice in hasty impatience. “What in the world were you so long about answering the ’phone for? I’ve been waiting here an age. Now, listen, Aunt Crete. For heaven’s sake don’t you tell that crazy cousin of ours where to find us, or like as not he’ll take a notion to run down here and see us; and I should simply die of mortification if he did. This is a very swell hotel, and it would be fierce to have a backwoods relation appear on the scene. Now be sure you keep dark. I’ll never forgive you if you don’t. And say, Aunt Crete, won’t you please sew on the rest of that Val edging down the ruffles of the waist and on the skirt of my new lavender organdie, and do it up, and send it by mail? I forgot all about it. It’s on the bed in the spare room, and the edging is started. You sew it on the way it is begun. You’ll see. Now don’t you go to sewing it on in that old way because it is quicker; for it doesn’t look a bit pretty, and you’ve nothing much else to do, now we’re gone, anyway. And say, Aunt Crete, would you mind going down to Peters’s to-day, and telling Jennie I forgot all about getting those aprons to finish for the fair, and tell her you’ll finish them for her? Do it to-day, because she has to send the box off by the end of the week. And mother says you better clean the cellar right away, and she wondered if you’d feel equal to whitewashing it. I should think you’d like to do that, it’s so cool this warm weather to be down cellar. And, O, yes, if you get lonesome and want something to do, I forgot to tell you I left those three flannel shirt-waists all cut out ready to be made in the upper bureau drawer of the spare room. Now don’t read your eyes out the way you did the last time we went off and left you, and have to wear dark glasses for a week, because I have lots of things planned to do when I get home. I’m going to have Helena Bates for a week, and there’ll be several lunches and picnics doing. O, say, Aunt Crete, mother says, if there’s any more pie-cherries to be had, you better put up some; and be sure and stone them all. I just hate them with the seeds in. And I guess that’s all; only don’t forget you promised to have all those buttonholes worked for me in those underclothes I’m making, before I get back. Are you all right? Let me see. There was something else. O, yes, mother says you don’t need to get out the best china and make a great fuss as if you had grand company; he’s only a country boy, you know. Say, Aunt Crete. Are you there? Why don’t you answer? Aunt Crete! Hello! For pity’s sake, what is the matter with this ’phone? Hello, central! O, dear! I suppose she’s gone away. That’s the way Aunt Crete always does!”
Donald, a strange, amused expression upon his face, stood listening and hesitating. He did not know exactly what to do. Without any intention at all he had listened to a conversation not intended for his ears. Should he answer and tell who he was? No, for that would but embarrass Luella. Neither would it do to call Aunt Crete now, for they would be sure to find out he had heard. Perhaps it was better to keep entirely still. There seemed to be nothing serious at stake. Ruffles, and shirt-waists, and gingham aprons for a guild, and whitewashing the cellar! Nobody would die if none of them were done, and his blood boiled over the tone in which the invisible cousin at the other end of the wire had ordered Aunt Crete about. He could read the whole life-story of the patient self-sacrifice on the one hand and imposition on the other. He felt strongly impelled to do something in the matter. A rebuke of some sort should be administered. How could it best be done?
Meantime Luella was fuming with the telephone girl, and the girl was declaring that she could get no answer from Midvale any more. Donald stood wickedly enjoying their discomfiture, and was at last rewarded by hearing Luella say: “Well, I guess I’ve said all I want to say, anyway; so you needn’t ring them up again. I’ve got to go out boating now.” The receiver at the shore clicked into place, and the connection was cut off.
Then the young man hung up the receiver at the Midvale end of the line, and sat down to think. Bit by bit he pieced together the story until he had very nearly made out the true state of affairs. So they were ashamed of him, and were trying to get away. Could it be possible that they had been the people that got on the train as he got off? Was that girl with the loud voice and the pongee suit his cousin? The voice over the telephone seemed like the one that had called to the girl in the pony-cart. And had his eyes deceived him, or were there three plates on the breakfast-table that morning? Poor Aunt Crete! He would give her the best time he knew how, and perhaps it was also set for him to give his cousin a lesson.
CHAPTER III
A WONDERFUL DAY
Aunt Crete woke up at last from an uncomfortable dream. She thought Carrie and Luella had come back, and were about to snatch Donald away from her and bear him off to the shore.
She arose in haste and smoothed her hair, astonished at the freshness of her own face in the glass. She was afraid she had overslept and lost some of the precious time with Donald. There was so much to ask him, and he was so good to look at. She hurried down and was received warmly. Donald’s meditations had culminated in a plan.