“I’ll say we don’t need to be introduced! Grace and I are old friends,” he said, still unable to conceal his mystification at finding Grace established on terms of intimacy in his neighbor’s house.
“I inveigled Grace here without telling her it was to be a musical evening,” said Miss Reynolds.
“Oh, I’d have come just the same!” laughed Grace.
“We’ll cut the music now,” said Cummings. “It will be a lot more fun to talk. I tell you, Grace, it’s a joy to have a place of refuge like this! Miss Reynolds is the kindest woman in the world. I’ve adopted her as my aunt.”
He bowed to Miss Reynolds, and glanced from one to the other with boyish eagerness for their approval.
“That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” Miss Reynolds retorted with a grieved air. “Why don’t you tell him, Grace, that being an aunt sounds too old. You might both adopt me as a cousin!”
Grace and Bob discussed the matter with mock gravity and decided that there was no good reason why they shouldn’t be her cousin.
“Then you must call me Cousin Beulah!” said Miss Reynolds. Her nephews and nieces were widely scattered she said, and she didn’t care for her lawful cousins.
Grace talked much more freely under the stimulus of Bob’s presence. It appeared that Miss Reynolds had not known Bob until she moved into the neighborhood and their acquaintance had begun quite romantically. Miss Reynolds had stopped him as he was passing her house shortly after she moved in and asked him whether he knew anything about trees. Some of the trees on her premises were preyed upon by malevolent insects and quite characteristically she had halted him to ask whether he could recommend a good tree doctor.
“You looked intelligent; so I took a chance,” Miss Reynolds explained. “And the man you recommended didn’t hurt the trees much—only two died. I’ve bought a tree book and hereafter I’ll do my own spraying.”