"No; mamma is silly, that's all," said Carolyn, frankly.
"As if that were not enough!" Here Lawrence laughed, but the line did not leave his forehead.
"You'll have to tell him now, mamma," said the girl, "or he will really think we don't want him."
Mrs. Ffolliott hesitated. And as she hesitated a glitter grew quite decidedly in Lawrence's eyes. The Ffolliott home had always been his home, and though "Aunt Tishy" was not his aunt, but only a second cousin, she had been very kind to the boy whom she had persuaded her husband virtually to adopt when he had been left alone before he was ten years old.
"Yes, you will certainly have to tell me," he said; and he drew himself up a little as he spoke. "I thought," he went on, "when I overheard you speak of sending me a message, that you were going away somewhere; but if it's not convenient for you to have me—"
"Now it's you who are silly," Carolyn interrupted.
"You see," said Mrs. Ffolliott, "we have just heard from Prudence."
"Well?"
Lawrence knew that Carolyn was carefully refraining from looking at him, and this knowledge keenly exasperated him.
"I thought that—I didn't know but—"