"That has always been enough for me," I replied. "My uncle used to try to interest me, and I wore out a good many pairs of shoes following him through museums and salesrooms, but he gave me up when he found that my pagan soul was aroused by nothing but pottery idols. It wasn't the pottery that interested me even there, but only the ugliest designs. I am a heathen!"
"I am gratified that you make the admission so frankly," said Mrs. Farnsworth. "I have always been a great admirer of the heathen."
"I like them when they are nice," said Mrs. Bashford.
"Yes; I have found you very discriminating in your choice of the species, Alice. But, you know, Mr. Singleton, Alice and I never can agree as to just what a heathen is. All our squabbles have been about that. The old hymn pictured the heathen in his blindness bowing down to wood and stone; but I'm disposed to broaden my definition to include all who believe in fairies good or bad, and persons who honestly believe in signs, omens, and lucky stones and all who have the receipt of fern-seed and walk invisible—there's Shakespeare for that. Some very good Christians are also very nice heathens: we mustn't be narrow and bigoted about such things."
"I think," said Mrs. Bashford soberly, "that I have always believed in witches; and if I keep on believing I shall see one some day. We shall find anything in this world that we believe in hard enough. Now a witch—the kind of witch I have always expected to wake up and find flourishing a broom at me from the foot of my bed——"
She was talking very gravely, as though witches were the commonest topic of conversation, but finding my eyes turned upon her in frank wonder, she laughed at my amazement.
"Let us be honest with you, Mr. Singleton," Mrs. Farnsworth explained, "and tell you that we are just testing you. It may be a breach of hospitality, and you are all but a stranger, but we are curious to know whether you are of that small company of the favored of heaven who can play at being foolish without becoming idiotic. Alice is sometimes very near idiocy. You admit that, Alice!"
"I not only admit it, but I might even boast of it!" my aunt replied.
At the mention of witches I had caught Antoine crossing himself as he turned to the sideboard. I confess that I myself had been startled by the drift of the talk. Mrs. Farnsworth was far from being the grim duenna I had feared might be my aunt's chaperon, and there was certainly nothing in her appearance to suggest that she was a believer in witches. She and my aunt treated each other as though they were contemporaries, and it was Alice and Constance between them. As the talk ran exhaustively through the lore of witches and goblins I had hoped that one or the other would drop some clew as to the previous history of my amazing aunt. It was as plain as day that she and Mrs. Farnsworth indulged in whims for the joy of it, and her zest in the discussion of witches, carried on while Antoine served the table, lips tightly compressed, and with an exaggeration of his stately tread, was the more startling from the fact that my aunt's companion was a woman of years, a handsome woman with a high-bred air who did not look at all like a person who would discuss witches as though they had been made the topic of the day by the afternoon newspapers. And when the shape of a witch's chin became the immediate point of discussion I knew it was in Antoine's mind that such conversation was unbecoming, an offense to the memory of Raymond Bashford. Mrs. Farnsworth's brown eyes sparkled, and the color deepened in my aunt's cheeks as we discoursed upon witches and the chins thereof. I had a friend in college who used to indulge in the same sort of piffling, but that my uncle's widow and her elderly companion should delight in such absurdities bewildered me. I had been addressing my aunt as Mrs. Bashford—it seemed ridiculous to call her Aunt Alice—and in the heat of our argument as to whether witches are necessarily naughty and malign beings I had just uttered the "Mrs." when she bent toward me and said gravely and with no hint of archness: "Can't we make it Alice and Bob? I think that would be a lot friendlier."
I experienced a curious flutter of the heart the first time I tried it, but after that it came very easily. I found it impossible to think of her in terms of auntship, and it was a relief to have the relationship waived. She was simply the jolliest, prettiest girl that had ever crossed my horizon, and to be talking to her across the table gave me thrills compared with which sliding out of clouds in an airplane is only a rocking-chair pastime for old men.