Kit had mused into less disappointment, but there was still enough left to give him a subdued manner, and to shadow his bright face of the morning as he greeted his aunt and Helen.
He found them on the piazza; their diaphanous gowns showed that they had returned on a train early enough to have allowed them to change to these from their travelling garb. Beside Helen there stood a basket with a small window in one end. Kit’s animal-loving eye quickly noted it.
“My gracious! is Helen setting up a pet?” he wondered.
“How are you, Kit?” said Miss Carrington, extending her left hand lazily. “I hope you are all right?” She looked him over sharply. “You look all right! Come, that’s good and sensible!”
Helen leaned forward in her chair, holding out her pretty hand.
“It seemed queer to come home and not find you, Kit,” she said. “A big boy fills up a house, doesn’t he? And his absence fills it up, too—in another way!”
“That’s a kind and delicate implication, Nell, but it’s like Pudd’n-head Wilson’s idea of calling a man a mule; it leaves him in doubt, though the mule is such an admirable character. There are ways and ways of filling up a house, Nell, and boys aren’t popular in the rôle.”
Kit shook Helen’s hand merrily and talked glibly, with a happy carelessness that made the girl stare in her turn.
“You must have liked keeping house alone,” she said. “I never saw you look jollier, not even when you played on the winning team, ages ago! What’s the news? Are you rejoicing for yourself, or, altruistically, for others?”
She contrived to shake her head at Miss Carrington and signal to her that Kit did not know.