Whereupon he kissed her again, and with appreciably more fervour than before, having discovered, between the first kiss and the second, that Anne, grown up, was unquestionably more alluring than Anne as he had last seen her, although he remembered that even then he had had premonitions as to her future which he was now not at all surprised to find had been well founded.
Feeling that nothing could be better for that heavy heart of his uncle Stephen's than the application of such balm as lay in a girl's sweetness, Jim Dent conducted his adorable cousin in to spend the next half-hour beside the invalid's chair. In this act he showed the difference between himself and the average young man—between the sheep-dog, so to speak, always under the sway of a sense of duty to send his charges where they belong, and the sportive terrier, who thinks of nothing but his own diversion. It must be acknowledged, however, lest this young man be thought quite unnaturally altruistic, that he himself shared with his cousin Anne the pleasant task of making a dear and gentle elderly man forget for a time the load upon his breast, and that the pair of them, while they made merry for the benefit of Uncle Stephen, also laughed into each other's eyes quite as often as they did into his. Which, of course, gave him fully as much pleasure as it did themselves.
"Mother," said Jim Dent in a corner somewhere, "why not take a day off from the fuss and show Aunt Clara how to narrow, or widen, or double up, or whatever she seems to be trying to do, on that pink silk thing she's knitting? It's Christmas Eve, and she's finishing it up to give to Uncle Sam's baby, and she's all balled up. She never knit socks before. Somebody else helped her on the other one."
"James," said his mother sternly, but not as sternly as she might have spoken if her son's lips had not lightly kissed her ear before they murmured these words into it, "it is impossible to ignore your aunt's manner to me."
"It's not so awfully different, though, mother, from your manner to her. Still, let's see, how did the thing begin?" mused Jim. "She wrote that they'd all come out in July for a month, and you wrote back——"
"I said the simple truth, James, that my kitchen was quite as hot in the country as hers in the city, in July."
"It certainly was the simple truth, mother. Somewhat undecorated by a garnish of hospitality, though—eh?"
"I had not accepted your aunt's invitations to visit her in town in the winter."
"You'd had 'em, though. Don't unaccepted invitations count any?"
Isabel Dent stirred in her chair. "She had visited me time and again without invitation."