“One doesn’t have to joke to be a joke, Aunt Bell.”

“But what if he were funny?  Why is that so important?”

“Oh, it’s important because of the other thing that you know you know when you know that.”

“Mercy!  Child, you should have a cup of cocoa or something before you start off—­really—­”

The last long hatpin seemingly pierced the head of Nancy and she turned from the glass to fumble on her gloves.

“Aunt Bell, if Allan tells me once more in that hurt, gentle tone that I don’t please him, I believe I shall be the freest of free women—­ready to live.”

She paused to look vacantly into the wall.  “Sometimes, you know, I seem to wake up with a clear mind—­but the day clouds it.  We shouldn’t believe so many falsities, Aunt Bell, if they didn’t pinch our brains into it at a tender age.  I should know Allan through and through at a glance to-day, if I met him for the first time; but he kneaded my poor girl’s brain this way and that, till I’d have been done for, Aunt Bell, if some one else hadn’t kneaded and patted it into other ways, so that little memories come back and stay with me—­little bits of sweetness and genuineness—­of realness, Aunt Bell.”

“Nance, you are morbid—­and I think you’re wrong to go up there to be alone with your sick fancies—­why are you going, Nance?”

“Aunt Bell, can I really trust you not to betray me?  Will you promise to keep the secret if I actually tell you?”

Aunt Bell looked at once important and trustworthy, yet of an incorruptible propriety.

“I’m sure, my dear, you would not ask me to keep secret anything that your husband would be—­”

“Dear, no!  You can keep mum with a spotless conscience.”

“Of course; I was sure of that!”

“What a fraud you are, Aunt Bell—­you weren’t sure at all—­but I shall disappoint you.  Now my reason—­” She came close and spoke low—­“My reason for going to Edom, whatever it is, is so utterly silly that I haven’t even dared to tell myself—­so, you see—­my real reason for going is simply to find out what my reason really is.  I’m dying to know.  There!  Now never say I didn’t trust you.”

In the first shock of this fall from her anticipations Aunt Bell neglected to remember that All is Good.  Yet she was presently far enough mollified to accompany her niece to the station.

Returning from thence after she had watched Nancy through the gate to the 3:05 Edom local, Aunt Bell lingered at the open study door of the rector of St. Antipas.  He looked up cordially.

“You know, Allan, it may do the child good, after all, to be alone a little while.”

“Nancy—­has—­not—­pleased—­me!” The words were clean-cut, with an illuminating pause after each, so that Aunt Bell might by no chance mistake their import, yet the tone was low and not without a quality of winning sweetness—­the tone of the injured good.