"Aunt Vesta wanted you to see my new hat, Aunt Tree," said the girl.
"Do you like it?"
"Yes!" said Miss Vesta, coming forward timidly. "Good evening, Aunt Marcia. Oh, good evening to you, Doctor Strong. The hat seemed to me so pretty, and you are always so kindly interested, Aunt Marcia! I ought to apologise to you, Doctor Strong, for introducing such a subject."
"Vesta, don't twitter!" said Mrs. Tree. "Is there anything improper about the hat? It's very well, child, very well. I always liked a scoop myself, but folks don't know much nowadays. What do you think of it, young man?"
Geoffrey thought it looked like a lunar halo, but he did not say so; he said something prim and conventional about its being very pretty and becoming.
"Are you going to sit down?" asked Mrs. Tree. "I can't abide to see folks standing round as if they was hat-poles."
Miss Vesta slipped into a seat, but the younger Vesta shook her head.
"I must go on!" she said. "Aunt Phoebe is expecting a letter, and I must tell her that there is none."
"Yes, dear, yes!" said Miss Vesta. "Your Aunt Phoebe will be impatient, doubtless; you are right. And perhaps it will be best for me, too—" she half rose, but Mrs. Tree pulled her down again without ceremony.
"You stay here, Vesta!" she commanded. "I want to see you. But you"—she turned to Geoffrey, who had remained standing—"can go along with the child, if you're a mind to. You'll get nothing more out of me, I tell ye."
"I am going to send you a measles bacillus to-morrow morning," said the young doctor. "You must take it in your coffee, and then you will want to see me every day. Good-bye, Mrs. Tree! some day you will be sorry for your cruelty. Miss Vesta—till tea-time!"