"Let me take off your rubbers, Auntie Keren," she said.
"I haven't any," said Miss Keren briefly.
"Oh, Auntie Keren! On such a day as this, and after being ill with a cold!" said Happie reproachfully.
"I never thought to ask for them, child, and they forgot to lend me any," said Miss Keren.
Margery, Happie and their mother involuntarily glanced at one another. All three had the same thought: that Miss Keren was still ill and feverish, and that her mind was affected.
"I can go to a hotel," said Miss Keren, so irrelevantly that there seemed to be no doubt of the correctness of this surmise.
"A hotel, dear Miss Keren?" echoed Mrs. Scollard. Bob and the Gordon boys looked at her with an expression that plainly told her all three were ready to go for a doctor on the spot.
"To tell the truth I don't feel equal to it, neither in mind nor in body," said Miss Keren. "But I don't want to impose upon you. I know this tiny nest of Patty-Pans is hardly big enough for your large family, Charlotte. I am sorry to say—sorry for your sake, because I know you will not have the heart to refuse me—that there isn't another place on the face of the earth where I feel that I could bear to be to-day, and I want you all. Will you take me in, until I have time and strength to face the situation?"
Again the Scollards exchanged glances, but this time with a different meaning. This did not sound like delirium. Miss Keren was not usually incoherent, but there was something other than mental derangement behind these remarks.
"Miss Keren, I don't quite understand," began Mrs. Scollard. "I think you mean that you want to stay here with us to-night? You know that we are always delighted to have you with us, at any time, anywhere, and the elastic Patty-Pans can always take in another. Don't you remember how long you stayed here—so blessedly good to us when I was ill, not a year ago? And now there is only Gretta added to our family. She uses that little room at the end of the flat which we used to keep for a storeroom—she preferred it to crowding Margery and Happie. Bob can take that, Gretta can come into the older girls' room, and you can take Bob's room. You did mean that you didn't want to go home to-night, didn't you?"