They assured me of their willingness to wait, even in the face of what Miss Jenrys laughingly described as a devouring curiosity; and then, while she turned the talk upon the Fair and some of its wonders, Miss Ross, murmuring a word of polite excuse, took up my paper from the place where it had fallen from my hands.
'Thee will allow me—I have not seen our morning paper.'
'Oh, Aunt Ann, I had entirely forgotten it!' cried her niece contritely.
'It is not important, child,' replied the smiling Quakeress. 'There is very little in it now except the Fair, and that we can better read at first hand.'
Nevertheless, she began to turn the pages and to scan here and there through her dainty gold-framed spectacles, while Miss Jenrys began to interrogate me concerning the mysteries of Midway Plaisance.
'We hear such very contradictory stories, and I do not want to miss any feature of the foreign show worth seeing,' she said, with an arch little nod and smile across to her aunt, 'nor does Aunt Ann; and I don't quite feel like bearding all those Midway lions unguarded, unguided, and—unadvised.'
I was not slow to offer my own individual services, in such an earnest manner that, after a little hesitation and the assurance that it would not only not conflict with my 'business engagements,' but would afford an especial pleasure, inasmuch as I had not yet 'done' the Plaisance in any thorough manner, she finally accepted my proffered services for her aunt and herself, adding at last:
'To be perfectly honest, Mr. Masters, I know Aunt Ann will never enter that alarming, fascinating Ferris Wheel without an escort whom she can trust should we lose our heads and want to jump out one hundred feet above terra firma; and I am quite sure I shall want to jump. I always am tempted to jump from any great height. Do you believe in these sensations? I have heard people say that they could hardly restrain themselves from jumping into the water whenever they ride in a boat or cross a bridge.'
'I have heard of such cases,' I replied. And so we talked on, discussing this singular and seldom met with, but still existing fact, of single insane freaks in the otherwise perfectly sane, when the gentle Quakeress, uttering a little shocked exclamation and suddenly lowering her paper, turned toward us.
'Pardon me! but, June, child, what did you tell me was the name of the young man to whom thy friend Hilda O'Neil is betrothed?'