I said: “I think it would be a fine thing for you to take account of stock, Amy, and count all the lovely things you have. Maybe you’d feel better.” But she said: “I haven’t time; I’m too busy thinking of the things I haven’t----” And the whole trouble lay right there.
Well, as I said, we talked a lot, played the victrola a little, and then we got a long-necked mint-sauce bottle from the cook and fixed Evelyn’s bed. And then we turned in, or, as Miss Hooker would say, “retired.”
And I thought, as I always do, about Uncle Frank and Bradly-dear, and the Cranes, Willy Jepson, and baseball. But I went to sleep feeling less badly than I had the night before, for I felt confident that the bracelet would come back to me, and somehow Mr. Kempwood had made me less afraid, and home seemed nearer.
Evelyn found that bottle. I never heard such a noise. She said someone was trying to murder her! And everyone got up except Amy and me. We giggled until Aunt Penelope came in and said, “Does either of you know anything about this?” (Amy had come over in my bed), and then Amy said, “Maybe Jane did it,” but her mother didn’t seem convinced. She only said, “I will attend to you two in the morning!” and she said it sternly. When she went out we giggled some more. It was impossible to help, for Evelyn’s room is near ours, and we could hear her gasp and threaten to sit up all night, and then sort of hiccup and say she thought she was getting hysterics and that she hoped her mother would beat me. . . . And we could hear Aunt Penelope and Jane flop around and bells ring and hot drinks ordered, and all because Evelyn’s feet were a little wet, which was irrational, since she puts them in the tub at least once every day.
But as Uncle Archie said to me much later, “There is no reasoning with a woman,” and there is a lot in that statement. We giggled until Aunt Penelope returned, when we pretended to be asleep. I hoped the way we looked in sleep would soften her, but it didn’t.
I was in disgrace until about seven the next evening, but that comes later.
The next morning I will pass over hurriedly, as it was not pleasant. Aunt talked to us frankly, and Amy put the blame on me, where it belonged. But I would have liked her better if she’d let me step forward and take it, as I intended to. “You know it was your fault,” she said, after we went out of her mother’s room.
I said I knew it was.
“Well,” she said, “you needn’t be annoyed because I said so.”
I wasn’t annoyed. I was sorry that she was so poor a sport, but I wasn’t angry. I pitied her. I think you always feel sorry for a person when they don’t play the best game they can.