“But there’ll be no room here for anybody but those two, with their billing and cooing. ‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd.’
“Well, Carolyn May, if you’ve finished your supper, we’d better go up to bed. It’s long past your bedtime.”
“Yes, Aunty Rose,” said the little girl in a muffled voice.
Aunty Rose did not notice that Carolyn May did not venture to the door of the sitting-room to bid either Uncle Joe or Miss Amanda good-night. The child followed the woman upstairs with faltering steps, and in the unlighted bedroom that had been Hannah Stagg’s she knelt at Aunty Rose’s knee and murmured her usual petitions.
“Do bless Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda, now they’re so happy,” was a phrase that might have thrilled Aunty Rose at another time. But she was so deep in her own thoughts that she heard what Carolyn May said perfunctorily.
With her customary kiss, she left the little girl and went downstairs. Carolyn May had seen so much excitement during the day that she might have been expected to sleep at once, and that soundly. But it was not so.
The little girl lay with wide-open eyes, her imagination at work.
“Two’s company, three’s a crowd.” She took that trite saying, in which Aunty Rose had expressed her own feelings, to herself. If Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda were going to be married, they would not want anybody else around! Of course not!
Somewhere, somehow, in listening to older people talk, Carolyn May had obtained the impression that all couples desired to be by themselves just as soon as they were married. They had no need nor desire for other people. Her idea was that the so-called “honeymoon” extended over long, long months.
“And what will become of me?” thought Carolyn May chokingly.