"Moonlight!" sniffed Sarah. "Moonlight!" There is no language to express the disdain with which she spoke this word of philandering and frivolity.
"Moonlight is very pretty," ventured the other. "I rather like it myself."
"At your time of life!" retorted Sister Sarah. "You are too sentimental, Sister Ann, as well as too careless."
Thank Heaven they were going! The young man waited until their voices died in the distance, then crept cautiously to the bank. He had to find those dogs, and in a hurry. He had just seated himself to put on his shoes for the search, when he again heard the voices of women and once more plunged into the pool, like a monster yellow frog, as he reflected he must seem to the squirrel in the tree.
"But, Aunt Matilda, how do you know?" he heard as he came up under the willows. This new voice, sweet and limpid, belonged to a girl of such striking appearance that the young man was on the point of forgetting his dilemma—until that infernal mosquito settled down back of his ear again!
"My dear Adnah," said a jerky little voice in answer, "your aunts, remember, were all young once, and considered great beauties in their day." There was a world of gentle pride in Aunt Matilda's voice as she said this, and it sounded so well that she said it over again. "Great beauties in their day! In consequence they all had their experiences with men, and know that there is not one to be trusted. Not one, my child, not one! Believe your aunts."
"It seems impossible, aunty," declared the soft voice of Adnah. "Why, in that magazine were the pictures of some of the most noble-looking creatures—"
"Tut, tut, child, those are the very worst kind," hastily interrupted Aunt Matilda. "The more handsome they are, the more dangerous. Since you remain so incredulous, however, I suppose I shall have to tell you what we know about them."
The young man in the pool felt his circulation stopping. The two women were calmly sitting down on the bank to talk confidences, and from what he knew of the sex they were as likely as not to sit there until doomsday, compelling him to appear before the angel Gabriel without even a shroud. He was conscious of the beginning of a cramp in his left leg and his shoulders were becoming icy. He had to be motionless, too, and that was another hardship. The least movement might betray him, for the women sat quite near, and Adnah was facing him. Thanks to the thickness of his leafy hiding-place she could not see him, but he could see her quite plainly, and she was well worth looking at. She, too, wore a plain, skimp, black dress, and her brown hair was parted in the center and smoothed down over her ears, but there the resemblance to Aunt Matilda and the others ended, for her hair was wavy in spite of the severely straight brushing, and it glinted gold where little flecks of sunlight filtered through the branches of the tall trees to caress it. In the hair, too, was a single red rose, caught into place with a natural grace that it seemed a pity to waste on three spinster aunts and two dogs, and the same note of color was repeated in another rebellious blossom at the throat. The young face was plump and oval, and the cheeks were pink, the brown eyes were wide and sparkling and—Oh, well, the young man in the pool stopped cataloguing her attractions and simply summed her up as a stunningly pretty girl. Then he tried once more to get rid of that maddening mosquito and wished to high Heaven that they would go!
"When our dear mother died we four girls were all quite young," began Aunt Matilda, pausing primly to smooth down her skirts, and the young man in the watery prison gave up in despair. She was starting out like the old-fashioned story books, which never arrived any place, and never knew how to get back if they did. "Your Aunt Sarah was eighteen years old, your Aunt Ann and myself sixteen, and your poor, deluded mother fourteen. Our father, child, married again within the year, and so you see our acquaintance with the duplicity of men began at a very early age. Of course, we refused to live with a stepmother or to allow her to occupy our own dear mother's house. Left, then, upon our own responsibilities at so tender a period of our lives, it behooved us to conduct ourselves with the strictest of propriety, and I am most happy to say that we came triumphantly through the ordeal. Naturally, we being great beauties in those days, my child, great beauties, many gay young men fluttered about us, and some of them really made quite favorable impressions upon us. There was one in particular—"