“Would you be so very kind, Millicent,” said she, “as to wait a moment? I am trying to listen.”
Like a response to her words, the knob of the door was turned, the door swung, and Archie entered the room, smiling his odd little chewed-up smile.
Janet uttered a faint cry and took a single step, but, as if recognizing a superior right, hung back while the boy put his arm about his great-aunt’s waist and rather bashfully kissed her cheek.
She received the salute with entire composure, except for a tiny splash of red which crept up to each cheek-bone. “Is it really you, Archie?” said she. “You are a little late for dinner day before yesterday, but quite in time for to-day. Sit down and tell us where you have been.”
“Quite so!” exclaimed Mrs. Millicent. “Good heavens! Do you know how we have suffered? Where have you been? Why did you run away?”
But Archie, who had surrendered one-half of him to be hugged by Miss Smith and the other to be clapped on the shoulder by his uncle, seemed to think a vaguely polite “How-de-do, Aunt Millicent; I’m sorry to have worried you!” to be answer enough. Only when the question was repeated by Mrs. Winter herself did he reply: “I’m awfully sorry, Aunt Rebecca, but I’ve promised not to say anything about it. But, truly, I didn’t mean to bother you.”
Millicent exploded in an access of indignation: “And do you mean that you expect us to accept such a ridiculous promise—after all we have been through?”
“Quite so,” remarked Aunt Rebecca, with a precise echo of her niece’s most Anglican utterance—the gift of mimicry had been one of Mrs. Winter’s most admired and distrusted social gifts from her youth.
Rupert Winter hastened to distract Millicent’s attention by saying decisively: “If the boy has promised, that ends it; he can’t break his parole. Anyhow, they don’t seem to have hurt you, old son?”
“Oh, they treated me dandy, those fellows,” said Archie. “Miss Janet, I know how to run an electric motor-car, except backing.”