In the centre of the lawn stood a dial, inscribed with the old dial motto:
| The Hours Pass and are Numbered. |
Phyl paused for a moment just as she had paused in the street, and Pinckney looking at her noticed again that uptilt of the head, and that far away look as of a person who is trying to remember or straining to hear.
Then a voice from the house came across the broad veranda leading from the garden to the lower rooms.
A female voice that seemed laughing and scolding at the same time.
“Dinah! Dinah! bless the girl, will she never learn sense— Dinah! Ah, there you are. How often have I told you to put General Grant in the sun first thing in the morning?— You’ve been dusting! I’ll dust you. Here, get away.”
Out on the veranda, parrot cage in hand, came a most surprising lady. Antique yet youthful, dressed as ladies were wont to dress of a morning in long forgotten years, bright eyed, and wrathfully agitated.
“Aunt,” cried Pinckney. “Here we are.”
The sun was in Miss Pinckney’s eyes; she put the cage down, shaded her eyes and stared full at Phyl.
“God bless me!” said Miss Pinckney.