“What fool nonsense is this?” he demanded.  “What in the world possessed you, Kit, to put yourself in such an equivocal position?  Unless”—­he stopped and turned a little white—­“unless you are going to marry Jim.”

I am sorry for Max.  He is such a nice boy, and good looking, too, if only he were not so fierce, and did not want to make love to me.  No matter what I do, Max always disapproves of it.  I have always had a deeply rooted conviction that if I should ever in a weak moment marry Max, he would disapprove of that, too, before I had done it very long.

“Are you?” he demanded, narrowing his eyes—­a sign of unusually bad humor.

“Am I what?”

“Going to marry him?”

“If you mean Jim,” I said with dignity, “I haven’t made up my mind yet.  Besides, he hasn’t asked me.”

Aunt Selina had been talking Woman’s Suffrage in front of the fireplace, but now she turned to me.

“Is this the vase Cousin Jane Whitcomb sent you as a wedding present?” she demanded, indicating a hideous urn-shaped affair on the mantel.  It came to me as an inspiration that Jim had once said it was an ancestral urn, so I said without hesitation that it was.  And because there was a pause and every one was looking at us, I added that it was a beautiful thing.

Aunt Selina sniffed.

“Hideous!” she said.  “It looks like Cousin Jane, shape and coloring.”

Then she looked at it more closely, pounced on it, turned it upside down and shook it.  A card fell out, which Dallas picked up and gave her with a bow.  Jim had come out of the den and was dancing wildly around and beckoning to me.  By the time I had made out that that was not the vase Cousin Jane had sent us as a wedding present, Aunt Selina had examined the card.  Then she glared across at me and, stooping, put the card in the fire.  I did not understand at all, but I knew I had in some way done the unforgivable thing.  Later, Dal told me it was her card, and that she had sent the vase to Jim at Christmas, with a generous check inside.  When she straightened from the fireplace, it was to a new theme, which she attacked with her usual vigor.  The vase incident was over, but she never forgot it.  She proved that she never did when she sent me two urn-shaped vases with Paul and Virginia on them, when I—­that is, later on.

“The Cause in England has made great strides,” she announced from the fireplace.  “Soon the hand that rocks the cradle will be the hand that actually rules the world.”  Here she looked at me.

“I’m not up on such things,” Max said blandly, having recovered some of his good humor, “but—­isn’t it usually a foot that rocks the cradle?”

Aunt Selina turned on him and Mr. Harbison, who were standing together, with a snort.

“What have you, or you, ever done for the independence of woman?” she demanded.

Mr. Harbison smiled.  He had been looking rather grave until then.  “We have at least remained unmarried,” he retorted.  And then dinner was again announced.