'You mustn't mind them, Aunt Alice,' smiled Lucy gaily. 'They argue by the hour about Amelia and Fleming, and neither of them exists; but sometimes they go into such details and grow so excited that I really begin to believe in them myself.'
But Mrs. Crowley, though she appeared a light-hearted and thoughtless little person, had much common sense; and when their party was ended and she was giving Dick a lift in her carriage, she showed that, notwithstanding her incessant chatter, her eyes throughout the evening had been well occupied.
'Did you owe Bobbie a grudge that you asked him to supper?' she asked suddenly.
'Good heavens, no. Why?'
'I hope Fleming won't be such a donkey as you are when he's your age.'
'I'm sure Amelia will be much more polite than you to the amiable, middle-aged gentleman who has the good fortune to be her husband.'
'You might have noticed that the poor boy was eating his heart out with jealousy and mortification, and Lucy was too much absorbed in Alec to pay the very smallest attention to him.'
'What are you talking about?'
Mrs. Crowley gave him a glance of amused disdain.
'Haven't you noticed that Lucy is desperately in love with Mr. MacKenzie, and it doesn't move her in the least that poor Bobbie has fetched and carried for her for ten years, done everything she deigned to ask, and been generally nice and devoted and charming?'