“Um----” she mused, and then: “Well, we’ll have a nice breakfast in bed after you’ve been in the tub. Use those bath salts the doctor gave you, dear--very relaxing. And I’ll hunt something for you to read.” She was very nice to me and I did so appreciate it.
“Evelyn wanted you to go driving with her; she’s decided to go out to-day; but I wouldn’t let her call you. Got up and had breakfast with her father this morning for some reason. Usually we don’t see her before ten on Sundays, but the young mind is a riddle. . . . Do you think you can go to sleep again after breakfast?”
I said I’d try.
“I’ll send Jane in to get you a fresh nightdress and to help you bathe,” said aunt as she stood up, and then she patted my cheek, murmured something of an engagement, and left. When Jane came in I nearly fainted. She had her right hand done up, and she told me she had run an ice-pick into her second finger and that it “hurt something fierce.” I thought she was pretty cool about it, for at that time I was sure it was Jane.
“Didn’t know the cook let you touch the refrigerator,” I said, as I kicked off my slippers and stepped in the tub.
Jane, who was picking up my nighty, explained that the cook had been out and that she was entertaining a “gentleman friend,” who had brought a bottle of beer with him. And that sounded queer to me. It isn’t just the thing one would pick out for an offering to Love, and besides it is not as common as it once was.
“He’s lucky to have it,” I said, and then: “Do you like ice in beer? I didn’t know people usually put it in that.”
Jane grew pink and she looked at me appealingly. I couldn’t soften, for I knew I must get whatever clues I could.
“Some people likes it in,” she said lamely and then went to get me a fresh nightdress and a négligé of Amy’s that Aunt Penelope had told her to let me wear.
She brushed my hair and tied it with great bows of wide pink ribbon and then tucked me into bed.