“It seems to me I never saw the sky prettier,” was Aunt Abigail’s astonishing beginning. But no one was in the mood to join her in discussing the beauties of nature. “Where have you been?” was the cry echoed from lip to lip.
Aunt Abigail smoothed a wrinkle in her skirt, and for the first time since undertaking the chaperonage of the Terrace girls, she looked a trifle discomfited.
“I found such an interesting story in the garret,” she said, “a continued story it was, and it ran through an entire year, fifty-two numbers. I had a little difficulty in finding every instalment, but I succeeded at last. You girls will enjoy reading it. I am afraid–” Aunt Abigail glanced uneasily at the rosy west, and left the sentence unfinished. “I hope,” she said instead, “that you didn’t wait dinner for me.”
“But the door was locked,” said Peggy, finding it almost impossible to believe that their alarm had been groundless.
“Yes. I thought it wasn’t quite safe to leave the door unlocked, when I would be in the third story, but I didn’t want to have to hurry down to let you in. I locked the front door on the outside, and hung up the key. Then I went in by the back door and locked it on the inside.”
“And you mean that you’ve been in the garret all these hours?” cried Amy in accents of exasperation. Her face gave no hint of its usual easy-going good-nature. Though the tears were still undried upon her cheeks, ominous lightning played in her eyes. It really looked as if she could not easily forgive Aunt Abigail for her failure to be kidnapped by gypsies.
And just at the right moment somebody giggled. Among other benefits that laughter confers on the race, it not infrequently serves as a lightning conductor. With all the anxiety they had suffered, the situation was ludicrous nevertheless. While they had agonized below stairs, Aunt Abigail had sat on the garret floor, absorbed in a sensational serial story, oblivious to everything but the next chapter. An uncontrollable titter went the rounds. It gained volume, like a seaward flowing brook. It swelled to a roar. And Amy, who for a moment had stood silent and disdainful, as if she defied the current to sweep her off her feet, gave up all at once, and laughed with the rest.
Aunt Abigail laughed too, though more as if she wished to appear companionable than because she really saw the joke. When the silence of exhaustion followed the uproar, and the girls were wiping their wet eyes and each avoiding the glances of her neighbor, for fear of going off into another paroxysm, Aunt Abigail made a remark which helped to explain her failure to enter into the fun.
“I really hope you didn’t wait dinner,” repeated Aunt Abigail politely. “And if–if it’s the same to the rest of you, I vote for an early supper.”