"It's perfectly charming of you to care."
"What an odd thing to say to us! Is it not very natural to care? Besides your being related, you have also been so considerate and so nice to us that we'd care anyway, I think. Don't you, Silvie?"
Silvette nodded her golden-crowned head.
"The thing to do for the present," she said, "is for you to take that farther room. It was Diane's idea, and I entirely agree with her—after seeing you."
"That was the sudden conclusion of which I spoke to you," explained Diana. "Such things come to me instinctively. I thought to myself, 'If he mentions the kinship between us, then we'll ask him to remain.' And you did. And we do ask you; don't we, Silvie?"
"Certainly. If two old maids wish to entertain their masculine cousin for a week or two, whose affair is it? Let Mrs. Grundy shriek; I don't care. Do you, Diane?"
"No, I don't. Besides," she added naïvely, "she's out of town."
They all laughed. The germ of a delightful understanding was beginning to take shape; it had already become nascent and was developing in every frank smile, every candid glance, every unembarrassed question and reply.
"We have no parents," said Diana gravely. "You have none, have you?"
"No," he said.