Aunt Philippa struck her steed smartly with the whip and controlled his resultant friskiness with admirable skill.
"Well, you know it's pleasanter," I said, wickedly. "Just think what a doleful world it would be if everybody were sensible."
Aunt Philippa looked at me out of the corner of her eye and disdained any skirmish of flippant epigram.
"So you want to get married?" she said. "You'd better wait till you're grown up."
"How old must a person be before she is grown up?" I asked gravely.
"Humph! That depends. Some are grown up when they're born, and others ain't grown up when they're eighty. That same Mrs. Roderick I was speaking of never grew up. She was as foolish when she was a hundred as when she was ten."
"Perhaps that's why she lived so long," I suggested. All thought of seeking sympathy in Aunt Philippa had vanished. I resolved I would not even mention Mark's name.
"Mebbe 'twas," admitted Aunt Philippa with a grim smile. "I'd rather live fifty sensible years than a hundred foolish ones."
Much to my relief, she made no further reference to my affairs. As we rounded a curve in the road where two great over-arching elms met, a buggy wheeled by us, occupied by a young man in clerical costume. He had a pleasant boyish face, and he touched his hat courteously. Aunt Philippa nodded very frostily and gave her horse a quite undeserved cut.
"There's a man you don't want to have much to do with," she said portentously. "He's a Methodist minister."