"Allan, you outdid yourself!" Aunt Bell had come in and, in the mirror over the dining-room mantel, was bestowing glances of unaffected but strictly impartial admiration upon the bonnet of lilac blossoms that rested above the lustrous puffs of her plenteous gray hair.
The young man looked up from his meditative pacing of the room.
"Aunt Bell, I think I may say that I pleased myself this morning—and you know that's not easy for me."
"It's too bad Nance wasn't there!"
"Nancy is not pleasing me," began her husband, in gentle tones.
"I didn't feel equal to it, Allan," his wife called from the library.
"Oh, you're there! My dear, you give up too easily to little indispositions that another woman would make nothing of. I've repeated that to you so often that, really, your further ignoring it appears dangerously like perverseness——"
"Is she crying?" he asked Aunt Bell, as they both listened.
"Laughing!" replied that lady.
"My dear, may I ask if you are laughing at me?"