“Well then, I’m going to grin and bear it as best I might. But please come see me when you get back from ’Sconset. Gee I’d like to go over there with you. It’s a peach of a place. It’s not quite so formal as Nantucket Town, more rough and ready. When all the summer folk go, I run over there and visit Cousin Esther sometimes. She loves to have me, although she is cleaning house most of the time getting rid of the leavings of the actress who rents her place for the summer. I am sure it is clean as clean, but she is never content until she has scrubbed every board three times at least. I’ll get Cousin Esther to ask you to come too. Will you?”
“But I’ll be gone—out West—home—somewhere by that time.” Frances tried to draw her hand away but Tim held on to it.
“But sometime would you go if Cousin Esther asked you?”
“Would she make three kinds of pies?”
“Sure! Ten kinds!”
“All right then!” Frances was laughing and blushing but she gave Tim’s hand a little answering pressure and left the boy happy and not so indignant with the fractured hip as that member no doubt deserved. After all, he reflected, there is generally a reason for everything.
“Cousin Esther!” he called after the Boojummers were out of the house, “please come here a minute.”
“Well, what is it?” and Esther came and stood by his bed, looking down on the red-haired man that seemed to her still the little boy who had been the plague and joy of her summers since he was able to crawl. She tried to look stern, but her eyes were soft in spite of her.
“What do you think of the one called Frances?”