Well, that queers the game entirely. Two minutes more, and Vee has been towed in for inspection and I'm left alone in banishment.
"Well, well!" I can hear Uncle Kyrle sing out. "Why, young lady, what right had you to change from a tow-headed schoolgirl into such a—Zenobia, please face the other way and don't listen, while I try to tell this radiant young person how utterly charming she has become. No, I can't begin to do the subject justice. Twenty or thirty years ago I might have had some success. Ah, me! Those gray eyes of yours, my dear, hold mischief enough to wreck a convention of saints. Ah, blushing, are you? Forgive me. I ought to know better. Let me tell you, though, I've a young nephew with a pair of blue eyes that might be a match for your gray ones. You must allow me to bring him up some day."
And I'd like to have had a glimpse of Vee's face just then. About there, though, Aunty breaks in.
"A nephew, Mr. Ballard?" says she.
"Poor Dick's boy," says he. "The one we hunted all over the States for after Dick took him on that wild goose chase from which he never came back. Let's see, you must have known the youngster's mother,—Irene Ballard."
"That stunning young woman with the copper-red hair whom you introduced at Palermo?" asks Aunty. "Is—is she——"
"No," says Uncle Kyrle. "Poor Irene! She was always doing something for someone, you know, and when this big war got under way—well, she went to the front at the first call from the Red Cross. I might have known she would. I suppose she simply couldn't bear to keep out of it—all that suffering, and so much help needed. No more skillful or efficient hands than hers, I'll wager, Madam, were ever volunteered, nor any braver soul. She was pure gold, Irene."
"And," puts in Aunty, "she was—er——"
Uncle Kyrle nods. "In a field hospital, under fire," says he, "late last September. That's all we know. Where do you think, though, I ran across that boy of hers? Found him at Zenobia's; found them both rather, at a theater. Sheer luck. For if you'll pardon my saying it, that youth is a nephew I'm going to be proud of some of these days unless I am——"
Say, this was gettin' a little too personal for me. I'd been shiftin' around uneasy for a minute or two, and about then I decided it wouldn't be polite to listen any longer. So I make a dash out the side door into the hall, not knowin' just what to do or where to go. And I bumps into Selma wheelin' in the tea wagon. That gives me a hunch.