Annie made no answer, but she pressed his hand tightly as she looked up into his face.  He kissed her as she stood, notwithstanding his belief that old Mrs Keswick was fully capable of bounding down on him, umbrella in hand, from an upper window.

“What do you think she is going to do?” Annie asked presently.

“My dear Annie,” said he, “I do not believe that there is a person on earth who could divine what your Aunt Keswick is going to do.  As to that, we must simply wait and see.  But, for my part, I know what I must do.  I must write a letter to Miss March, and inform her, plainly and definitely, that I have ceased to be a suitor for her hand.  I think also that it will be well to let her know that we are engaged?”

“Yes,” said Annie, “for she will be sure to hear it now.  But she will think it is a very prompt proceeding.”

“That’s exactly what it was,” said Lawrence, smiling, “prompt and determined.  There was no doubt or indecision about any part of our affair, was there, little one?”

“Not a bit of it,” said Annie, proudly.

At dinner that day Annie took her place at one end of the table, and Lawrence his at the other, but the old lady did not make her appearance.  She was so erratic in her goings and comings, and had so often told them they must never wait for her, that Annie cut the ham, and Lawrence carved the fowl, and the meal proceeded without her.  But while they were eating Mrs Keswick was heard coming down stairs from her room, the front door was opened and slammed violently, and from the dining-room windows they saw her go down the steps, across the yard, and out of the gate.

“I do hope,” ejaculated Annie, “that she has not gone away to stay!”

If Annie had remembered that the boy Plez, in a clean jacket and long white apron, officiated as waiter, she would not have said this, but then she would have lost some information.  “Ole miss not gone to stay,” he said, with the license of an untrained retainer.  “She gone to Howlettses, an’ she done tole Aun’ Letty she’ll be back agin dis ebenin’.”

“If Aunt Keswick don’t come back,” said Annie, when the two were in the parlor after dinner, “I shall go after her.  I don’t intend to drive her out of the house.”

“Don’t you trouble yourself about that, my dear,” said Lawrence.  “She is too angry not to come back.”

“There is one thing,” said Annie, after a while, “that we really ought to do.  To-morrow Aunt Patsy is to be buried, and before she is put into the ground, those little shoes should be returned to Aunt Keswick.  It seems to me that justice to poor Aunt Patsy requires that this should be done.  Perhaps now she knows how wicked it was to steal them.”

“Yes,” said Lawrence, “I think it would be well to put them back where they belong; but how can you manage it?”

“If you will give them to me,” said Annie, “I will go up to aunt’s room, now that she is away, and if she keeps the box in the same place where it used to be, I’ll slip them into it.  I hate dreadfully to do it, but I really feel that it is a duty.”