PART II

CHAPTER XI

IN AUNT HETTY’S GARDEN

I

June 10.

Marise bent to kiss the soft withered cheek.  “Elly is a real Vermonter, but I’m not.  She can get along with just ‘Hello, Aunt Hetty,’ but that’s not enough for me,” she said tenderly to the old woman; “I have to kiss you.”

“Oh, you can do as you like, for all of me,” answered the other with an unsparing indifference.

Marise laughed at the quality of this, taking the shaky old hand in hers with a certainty of affection returned.  She went on, “This is a regular descent on you, Cousin Hetty.  I’ve come to show you off, you and the house and the garden.  This is Mr. Welles who has settled next door to us, you know, and this is Mr. Marsh who is visiting him for a time.  And here are the children, and Eugenia Mills came up from the city last night and will be here perhaps, if she gets up energy after her afternoon nap, and Neale is coming over from the mill after closing hours, and we’ve brought along a basket supper and, if you’ll let us, we’re going to eat it out in your garden, under Great-great-grandmother’s willow-tree.”

Cousin Hetty nodded dry, though not uncordial greetings to the strangers and said crisply, “You’re welcome enough to sit around anywhere you can find, and eat your lunch here, but where you’re going to find anything to show off, beats me.”

“Mr. Welles is interested in gardens and wants to look at yours.”

“Not much to look at,” said the old lady uncompromisingly.

“I don’t want to look at a garden!” clamored little Mark, outraged at the idea.  “I want to be let go up to Aunt Hetty’s yattic where the sword and ’pinning-wheel are.”

“Would all you children like that best?” asked Marise.

Their old kinswoman answered for them, “You’d better believe they would.  You always did yourself.  Run along, now, children, and don’t fall on the attic stairs and hurt yourselves on the wool-hetchels.”

The fox-terrier, who had hung in an anguish of uncertainty and hope and fear on the incomprehensible words passing between little Mark and the grown-ups, perceiving now that the children ran clattering towards the stairs, took a few agitated steps after them, and ran back to Marise, shivering, begging with his eyes, in a wriggling terror lest he be forbidden to follow them into the fun.  Marise motioned him along up the stairs, saying with a laughing, indulgent, amused accent, “Yes, yes, poor Medor, you can go along with the children if you want to.”

The steel sinews of the dog’s legs stretched taut on the instant, in a great bound of relief.  He whirled with a ludicrous and undignified haste, slipping, his toe-nails clicking on the bare floor, tore across the room and dashed up the stairs, drunk with joy.