AFTER a hurried knock Louise burst into Miriam’s room. Miriam was seated before the mirror brushing her reddish-brown hair. “Who do you suppose has turned up to the feast?” cried Louise, reaching for a chair and impatiently rescuing the filmy pink draperies of her frock from the handle of a drawer. “Aunt Denise, straight from Quebec! After all these months of dilly-dallying she stalks in when we’re having a reunion of the men her husband spent half his editorial and political career in insulting!”
“Why didn’t she telegraph?”
“Too stingy,—heaven forgive me for saying it,—and too old-fashioned. She arrived with Papa and the Bootses and Pearl and Amy Sweet. They were stuffed into the car like flowers in a vase, her trunk lashed on behind. Papa tried to telephone, but Aunt Denise said if her own niece couldn’t take her in without being warned, she wouldn’t come at all. That’s her spirit. What am I to do?”
“Have you explained the situation to her?”
“Does one try to explain red to a bull?”
“Then tip the others off. We’ll have to engage her on safe subjects.”
“If you would Miriam. In French,—for she hates English. She behaves as though French were the official language of Canada. . . I’ve been waiting for something to go wrong, and now it will. ‘Claudia dear’ was difficult enough. There’s no keeping that woman off a scent.”
“What scent?”
Louise was vexed at her slip. “Oh, scents in general. Yours in particular is most refreshing. Is that the Coty?”
Without waiting for an answer she plunged on. “Now I’ll have to rearrange the seating. If I put Aunt Denise near Grandfather she may scalp him. His triumphant progress across the continent must have rubbed her the wrong way . . . I’ll have enough on my hands without that. If Papa drinks one glass too many he’ll tease Aunt Denise about the Pope. And the Bootses are fanatical teetotallers, and I wouldn’t put it past them to dash the glass from old Papa Windrom’s lips!”