It was a race then up the stairs, with me tryin' to protest on the jump that I didn't know Vee had decided to shift Auntie from the reg'lar guest room to this one.
"Surely you didn't," admits Vee. "But I thought the south room would be so much sunnier and more cheerful. I—I'll explain to Auntie."
"It can't be done," says I. "Stop it, Buddy! All right, boy. It's perfectly all right."
Buddy don't believe it, though, until I've opened the door and switched on the light. Young as he is he's right up on the watch-dog act and when strangers come prowlin' around in the dark that's his cue for goin' into action. He has cornered Auntie scientific and while turnin' in a general alarm he has improved the time by tearin' mouthfuls out of her dress. At that, too, it's lucky he hadn't begun to take mouthfuls out of Auntie.
As for the old girl, she's so scared she can't talk and so mad she can hardly see. She stands there limp in a tattered skirt with some of her gray store hair that has slipped its moorin's restin' jaunty over one ear and her eyes blazin' hostile.
"Oh, Auntie!" begins Vee. "It was all my——"
"Not a word, Verona," snaps Auntie. "I know perfectly well who is responsible for this—this outrage." With that she glares at me.
Course, we both tells her just how the mistake was made, over and over, but it don't register.
"Humph!" says she at last. "If I didn't remember a warning I had at dinner perhaps I might think as you do, Verona. But I trust that nothing else has been—er—arranged for my benefit."
"That's generous, anyway," says I, indulgin' in a sarcastic smile.