"You don't mind my running away again, girls?" Mrs. Dunbar asked, folding the yellow telegram into the most unnecessarily minute squares. "It is such a nuisance, but I have to see some of those delegates safely out of New York. Mere artists are not always prudent tourists."
"Auntie dear, we hate to have you go." Cleo dipped her head in the quaint bird-like perk. "But we can have a lovely time here even alone—I mean without you. Oh, no, not without you——" And the burst of laughter that applauded her confusion was like a full colored illustration of a verbal mistake. "Now, you all know what I mean," she finished, pouting prettily.
"Of course we do," acceded her aunt. "You can have a perfectly lovely time without me, and get into the most delicious mischief, tagging poor Jennie along. I have given her orders, you know, to report to me by phone if you take a notion to go up in an airship, or tie a kite by hand to the moon, so don't venture too far from good old earth. Mary, you are getting rosy already. It seems to me, for an old nurse your Reda has rather suddenly given up her charge, not to have inquired for you this morning."
"Oh, Reda wouldn't. She is dreadfully afraid of strangers," replied
Mary.
"Why—pray?" asked Mrs. Dunbar simply. Mary shifted uneasily, shrugging her shoulders in the only foreign mannerism she carried, and answering with nothing more than a fleeting expression of annoyance.
"Oh, Reda is so queer, Aunt Audrey," Grace assisted, "she would run like an Indian if you just looked at her square in the eye."
"Is she Indian, Mary?" pressed Mrs. Dunbar gently.
"Yes, that is, she is from a Pacific Island outside of Central America.
You see, we were there when Loved One—went away."
Jennie was dusting the rails of the porch, and the little family kept moving about to accommodate her brush and polishing cloth.
"I must take a bag this time," Mrs. Dunbar said, reverting to her necessary New York trip. "I rather envy you chickens running around with no other cares than the next hour's adventure. Mine are all cut and antiseptically dried."