Like most women, she took a healthy human delight in "interfering"; but, unlike the majority of her sex, she indulged very rarely. When, however, she had made up her mind on the point of allowing herself to concern herself in other people's business, she experienced the exquisite relish of a strictly self-controlled gamester, who allows himself to play only rarely so that he may enjoy his sport with that peculiar zest which only long abstinence can whet.
On a sunny, warm September day, mellow with the promise of an Indian summer, Miss Bancroft, smart, though rotund, in lavender linen, set out on her pilgrimage to the house of Thomas Prescott.
"I see that you aren't above the traditional wiles of your sex, Aunt," commented George Arnold, looking up from his book, and surveying her with twinkling eyes, from the long wicker porch chair, where he had been dozing in the sun. "You've rigged yourself out in full panoply. That's a jaunty little parasol you have."
Miss Bancroft, standing on the broad steps, put up her parasol at this, to shade the fine texture of her gaily beflowered straw hat from the sun, and then glanced around at her nephew with a demure smile.
"I make a point of looking my best always when I'm going to see Tom Prescott. Of course he thinks me a sensible woman, a remarkably reasonable woman, and all that nonsense; but I like to leave him with at least a half-formed notion that I'm surprisingly well preserved, even if I have rather lost my waist-line. There was a time, you know——" the demure smile quirked the corners of her big, mobile mouth, and sparkled impishly in her eyes; then with a little wag of her head, she ran down the steps like a fat, jolly schoolgirl.
George Arnold, leaning back against a chintz cushion, watched the portly, festive figure that moved away under the trees of the long drive. Miss Bancroft usually seemed to roll slowly, but efficiently, along on wheels as ponderous and impressive as an old-fashioned stage-coach. He caught a last glimpse of lavender and white through the shrubs that bordered the end of the lawn. He felt a good deal of interest in this pilgrimage of his aunt's, although he had no very clear idea of the purpose of it. It had something to do with two very pretty young girls whom he had seen at an otherwise stupid dance the night before. One of the girls looked like a Dresden doll, the other had dark eyes, and a direct, shy, almost boyish smile. Her name was Anne—Nancy. Nancy suited her much better. He had thought about her several times. For no particular reason—she was hardly eighteen, and he was, well, he was thirty-three, though that was neither here nor there. It was simply that he liked her rather better than one likes most girls of that age. She had a way of listening to a man without that stupid, flustered expression, as though she was only wondering what in the world she should say when it should be her turn to talk. She liked books. He wondered if she knew that he wrote them. Of course he wasn't world-famous, but it might interest her to know that he was the George Arnold whose collections of exquisitely delicate children's stories had already been translated into six foreign languages, "including the Scandinavian."
He smiled to himself at the naïve vanity which had prompted this thought; and chastised it by telling himself that it was only too likely that her ignorance or knowledge of what he did or was were matters of like indifference to her.
Meantime, Miss Bancroft, puffing a little under the combined difficulties of avoirdupois and a beaming September sun, was looking with an almost pathetic anticipation at the rich cool shadows beneath which slept the rambling mansion of Thomas Prescott.
"I shall order some tea. A man is always so much more amenable to reason over a tea-table—and for my part, I'll not survive half an hour without a little light refreshment. I suppose I'll have to listen to a long discourse on the origin of the Slavic races or the religious customs of the Aztecs, until I can get him down to argue with me on his duty toward his fellow creatures. I hope to Heaven that his principles are drowsy to-day. I can't bear it if I have to combat a lot of principles. It's absolutely heathenish to have principles in warm weather anyway. Of course they are the proper things to have, but, dear me, they are such nuisances. It's all right to have them about yourself, I suppose, but to have them about other people is priggish, and quite useless, so far as I can see. My observation has taught me that if you like a person it makes no difference whether their principles coincide with your own or not, or even if they have none at all; and if you don't like a person, it's downright irritating to have to approve of them." Miss Bancroft's mental grammar, like much of her spoken grammar, was inaccurate, of course; as in other matters, she held rule to scorn, when the rule interfered with her personal conception of what she was trying to make clear to other people or to herself.
Under the vigorous thrust of her plump, direct forefinger, the door-bell pealed clearly in the cool remote regions of the house. Standing under the arch of the Norman doorway, she surveyed the broad, shade-flecked lawns with interest and a sort of irritable appreciation. Somewhere under the trees a gardener was raking the drive and burning neat piles of warm, brown leaves, from which the pungent smoke ascended in sinuous blue spirals, like languorously dancing phantoms of the dead leaves; and the pleasant, rhythmic sound of the rake on the gravel intensified the sober peaceful silence peculiar to that bachelor's domain.