“Tried the parlour?”

And directed her kindly and with his thumb, and in the other hand a pen divorced from his ear for the express purpose.

In crossing the lobby in the hotel at Savannah, Georgia, Lulu’s most pressing problem had been to know where to look.  But now the idlers in the Hess House lobby did not exist.  In time she found the door of the intensely rose-coloured reception room.  There, in a fat, rose-coloured chair, beside a cataract of lace curtain, sat Di, alone.

Lulu entered.  She had no idea what to say.  When Di looked up, started up, frowned, Lulu felt as if she herself were the culprit.  She said the first thing that occurred to her: 

“I don’t believe mamma’ll like your taking her nice satchel.”

“Well!” said Di, exactly as if she had been at home.  And superadded:  “My goodness!” And then cried rudely:  “What are you here for?”

“For you,” said Lulu.  “You—­you—­you’d ought not to be here, Di.”

“What’s that to you?” Di cried.

“Why, Di, you’re just a little girl——­”

Lulu saw that this was all wrong, and stopped miserably.  How was she to go on?  “Di,” she said, “if you and Bobby want to get married, why not let us get you up a nice wedding at home?” And she saw that this sounded as if she were talking about a tea-party.

“Who said we wanted to be married?”

“Well, he’s here.”

“Who said he’s here?”

“Isn’t he?”

Di sprang up.  “Aunt Lulu,” she said, “you’re a funny person to be telling me what to do.”

Lulu said, flushing:  “I love you just the same as if I was married happy, in a home.”

“Well, you aren’t!” cried Di cruelly, “and I’m going to do just as I think best.”

Lulu thought this over, her look grave and sad.  She tried to find something to say.  “What do people say to people,” she wondered, “when it’s like this?”

“Getting married is for your whole life,” was all that came to her.

“Yours wasn’t,” Di flashed at her.

Lulu’s colour deepened, but there seemed to be no resentment in her.  She must deal with this right—­that was what her manner seemed to say.  And how should she deal?

“Di,” she cried, “come back with me—­and wait till mamma and papa get home.”

“That’s likely.  They say I’m not to be married till I’m twenty-one.”

“Well, but how young that is!”

“It is to you.”

“Di!  This is wrong—­it is wrong.”

“There’s nothing wrong about getting married—­if you stay married.”

“Well, then it can’t be wrong to let them know.”

“It isn’t.  But they’d treat me wrong.  They’d make me stay at home.  And I won’t stay at home—­I won’t stay there.  They act as if I was ten years old.”

Abruptly in Lulu’s face there came a light of understanding.

“Why, Di,” she said, “do you feel that way too?”