were born.”
“You did?” Sherrill looked up with wonder in her eyes.
“Yes,” said Aunt Pat with a strangely tender look on her face, “I did. I was engaged to a young hypocrite once, and thought he was the angel Gabriel till I got my eyes open. Sometime I’ll tell you about it. There isn’t anybody living now who knows the story but myself. I thought I was heartbroken forever, and when my grandmother told me that he just wasn’t the man God had meant for me, and that He probably had somebody a great deal better waiting somewhere, I got very angry at her. But that turned out to be true, too, and I did have another lover who was a real man later. It wasn’t his fault that we never married. Nor mine either. He died saving a little child’s life. But the memory of him has been better for me all my life than if I’d married that first little selfish whiffet. So don’t let yourself think that the end of the world has come, Sherrill.”
Sherrill sat looking at the old lady and trying to reconstruct her ideas of her, wondering at the mellowing and sharpness that were combined in her dear whimsical old face.
“There, now, child, you’ve told enough!” said the old lady briskly. “Eat your supper and go to bed. Tomorrow you may tell me about everything else. We’ve had enough for tonight. I’ll talk while you eat now. What do you want to do next? Go to Europe?”
“Oh, not Europe!” Sherrill shrank visibly.
“Of course not!” snapped the old lady with triumph in her eyes. “We’ll go someplace a great deal more interesting.”
“I don’t think I want to go anywhere,” said Sherrill sadly. “I guess I had better just stay here and let people see I’m not moping. That is, if I can get away with it.”
“Of course you can!” lilted the old lady. “We’ll have the time of our lives. They’ll see!”
“The only place I’d want to go anyway would be out west by and by, back to my teaching. I’d like to earn money enough to pay you for this awful wedding, Aunt Pat!”
“Stuff and nonsense!” fumed the old lady. “If you mention that again, I’ll disinherit you! You hurt me, Sherrill!”
“Oh, forgive me, Aunt Pat! But you’ve been so wonderful!”
“Well, that’s no way to reward me. Go away when I’m just congratulating myself that I’ve got you all to myself for a while. Of course I don’t fool myself into thinking I can keep you always. You’re too good looking for that. And there are a few real men left in the world even in this age. They are not all Carter McArthurs. But at least let me have the comfort of your companionship until one comes along!”
“You dear Aunt Pat!”
“There’s another thing we’ve got to consider tomorrow,” said the old lady meditatively. “What are you going to do with those wedding presents?”
Sherrill lifted her face, aghast at the thought.
“Oh, mercy! I never thought about them. How terrible! What could one do?”
“Oh, send most of them back. Send Carter those his friends sent. Don’t bother about it tonight. We’ll work it out. You run along to bed now, and don’t think another thing about it.”
Ten minutes later Sherrill was back in her own room.
Gemmie had been there and removed every trace and suggestion of wedding from the place. Sherrill’s best old dresses hung in the closet; Sherrill’s old dependable brushes and things were on the bureau. It might have been the night before she ever met Carter McArthur as far as her surroundings suggested.
She cast a quick look of relief about her and went forward to the mirror and stood there, looking into her own eyes, just as she had done when she was ready for her marriage. Looked at her real self and tried to make it seem true that this awful thing had happened to her, Sherrill Cameron! And then suddenly her eyes wandered away from the deep sorrowful thoughts that she found in her mirrored eyes, with an unthinking glance at her slim white neck, and she started. Why! Where was her emerald necklace? She hadn’t taken it off when she put on her robe. She was sure she had not. She would have remembered undoing the intricate old clasp!
Frantically she searched her bureau drawers. Had Gemmie taken it away? Surely not. She went to the little secret drawer where she usually kept her valuable trinkets. Ah! There was the box