"One, two, three, four, five, six—seven! Not until the seventh man offers himself shall Cecilia have a husband! Is that the answer?"
For a moment Hezekiah watched the widening ripples made by the casting of her last pebble; then she came back and resumed her seat.
"You have done well, Chimney Man; and now I 'll not make you guess any more, though I found it all out for myself. When Aunt Octavia gave that memorandum-book to Cecilia, I knew it must have something to do with the seventh man. You know I love all Aunt Octavia's nonsense because it's the kind of foolishness I like myself, and the idea of a pretty little note-book to write down proposals in was precisely the sort of thing that would have occurred to my aunt. And it was in the bargain, too, that she herself should not in any way interfere, or try to influence the course of events: it should be the seventh suitor, willy-nilly. And I suspect she's been a little scared too."
"She has indeed! She was almost ready to throw the whole scheme over last night. Your naughtiness had got on her nerves."
"You missed the target that time: Aunt Octavia loves my naughtiness, and I think she has really been afraid Sir Pumpkin Wiggins would catch me. Now I did n't roam my aunt's house just for fun. I was doing my best to keep Cecilia from getting into some scrape about that seventh-suitor plan. I found out by chance how to get into Hopefield, and about the hidden stairway and the old rooms tucked away there. Papa really discovered that. A carpenter in Katonah who worked on the house helped to build papa's bungalow, and he told us how that ruin came to be there. That dyspepsia-cure man, who also immortalized himself by inventing the ribless umbrella, was very superstitious. He believed that if he built an entirely new house he would die. So he had his architect build around and retain those two rooms and that stairway of a house that had been on the ground almost since the Revolution. Mr. Pepperton, the architect, humored him, but hid the remains of the relic as far out of sight as possible."
"Trust Pep for that! And he did it neatly!"
"Yes; but it did n't save the umbrella-man; he died anyhow; or maybe his pies killed him. Papa was so curious about it that he took me with him one night just before Aunt Octavia moved here, and he and I found the rooms and the stair and the secret spring by which, if you know just where to poke the wall in the fourth-floor hall, you can disappear as mysteriously as you please."
"But how on earth did you darken the halls so easily? You nearly gave me heart-disease doing that!"
"Oh, that was a mere matter of a young lady in haste! When I found how easily I could pass you on the stair it became a fascinating game, and it was no end of fun to see just how long it would take you to catch me."
"I wish, Hezekiah, that you would stay caught!"