Ted chuckled at that. He and his Aunt Margery were the best of good friends. They always had been since Ted had refused to join her Round Table on the grounds that he might have to be sorry for being bad if he did, though he had subsequently capitulated, in view of the manifest advantages accruing to membership in the order.
"That's right. Lay it to me. I don't believe Uncle Phil was a saint, either, was he, Granny?" he appealed. "I'll bet the kids get some of their deviltry by direct line of descent."
His grandmother smiled.
"We forget a good deal about our children's naughtinesses when they are grown up," she said. "I've even forgotten some of yours, Teddy."
"Lucky," grinned her grandson, stooping to kiss her again. "Allons, enfants."
Later, when the obstreperous ones were in bed and everything quiet Philip and Margery sat together in the hammock, lovers still after eight years of strenuous married life and discussed Larry's last letter, which had contained the rather astonishing request that he be permitted to bring the little lady who had forgotten her past to Holiday Hill with him.
"Queer proposition!" murmured the doctor. "Doesn't sound like sober Larry."
"I am not so sure. There is a quixotic streak in him—in all you Holidays, for that matter. You can't say much. Think of the stray boys you have taken in at one time or another, some of them rather dubious specimens, I infer."
Margery's eyes smiled tender raillery at her husband. He chuckled at the arraignment, and admitted its justice. Still, boys were not mystery ladies. She must grant him that. Then he sobered.
"It is only you that makes me hesitate, Margery mine. You are carrying about as heavy a burden now as any one woman ought to take upon herself, with me and the house and the children and Granny. And here is this crazy nephew of mine proposing the addition to the family of a stranger who hasn't any past and whose future seems wrapped mostly in a nebular hypothesis. It is rather a large order, my dear."