"Oh, Aunt Keren, you know Laura!" said Happie regretfully. "She is so musically undependable! I'm afraid depending on Laura would be a good deal like taking the sign of the treble clef and the sign of the bass clef and putting them under one's arms for crutches hoping to walk with them. I wish I could say that I thought they could spare me, for I'd love to go—for the sake of both the Keren-happuchs!"
"Never mind the elder one, and the younger will have a long summer up there," said Miss Keren. "I think that I shall go in a few days. Rosie Gruber is quite able to look after me. Run along, child. Don't look regretful. I shall be perfectly safe, and shall quite enjoy solitude up there. You know I never had a chance to be in my country house alone, while it was mine. Gretta is calling you."
Happie ran down the hall, and soon she and Gretta were whisking dish cloth and dish towels, Happie doing her part in comparative silence while the once reticent Gretta gave her the history of the day in the tea room.
Margery did not appear. They caught a glimpse of her in another gown, all soft pearl-gray and white, as she went singing into the parlor, and they heard her moving chairs about and giving small touches of added arrangement to the orderly room, which symptoms made Happie groan forebodingly.
"Yes, there he is!" she exclaimed as the bell rang. "I don't see why he calls here so often. You would suppose that he would think her family might want Margery to themselves occasionally!"
"Oh, come, Happie! Mr. Gaston isn't here quite so often as that seems to mean. We do have Margery to ourselves a good many nights," said Gretta fairly. "I think he's very nice not to mind all of us. Up home when a young man calls on a girl the family let her have the room—I mean the parlor"—Gretta joined in Happie's laughter over this slip of hers into the Crestville name for the one significant best room in the farmhouses. "Well, up there if a girl has a friend he doesn't expect to call on any one but her. Mr. Gaston sees almost as much of you and Bob and Laura as he does of Margery. I think he's very nice not to mind, and you ought not to grudge him his small fraction of her—for he likes her very much, Miss Happie!"
"Of course he does. I'm not blind, and I'd shake him if he didn't, though I want to pound him because he does!" said inconsistent Happie.
"Happie," called Margery, as Happie tried to slip into her own room unheard, "do come here for a moment and let Mr. Gaston tell you something delightful!"
"I wonder if he is going away!" thought Happie. She was a little bit ashamed, later, to remember her ungraciousness. It was not pleasant to feel one's mind going backward and forward like a shuttlecock between the conviction that for the first time in her life she was unjust and the pang that made justice impossible when she realized afresh that this fine young Baltimorean would steal away her sister.
"Good-evening, Andromeda," said Robert Gaston, rising to greet her by his nickname for her that recalled the dragon-office boy from whom he had rescued her. "Faithful little Andromeda! Housekeeping and nursing all alone these many days! I hope your patient is better?"