"Great Scott, Johnny!" exclaimed Diane, aghast. "It's Aunt Agatha!"
Aunt Agatha dangerously motioned them away with the hand bag Johnny had returned.
"I'll be all right in a minute!" she sniffed tearfully. "Mamma was that way, too--mamma was. Tears would burst right out of her, especially when she grew so stout. I can't help it! When I think of all I've gone through with you off in the Green-glades or the Never-glades or whatever they are--and worrying all the time about your scalp and alligators--and you sitting there so peaceful, Diane, with your hair still on--I've got to cry--I just have and I will. And Carl's mysteriously disappeared--Heaven knows where! I've not seen him for weeks. Nor did he condescend to write me--as I must say you did--and very good of you too!" Whether Aunt Agatha was crying because her mother was stout and eruptively lachrymose, or because Diane's hair was still where it belonged, or because Carl was missing, Diane could not be sure.
Aunt Agatha puffed presently to a seat by the fire, with hair and hat awry, and dropped her hand bag.
"Johnny," she said severely, "don't stare so. I'm sorry of course that I made you drop the kettle when I came, I am indeed, but I'm here and there's the kettle--and that's all there is to it."
"Of course it is!" exclaimed Diane, kissing her heartily. "And I'm mighty glad to see you, Aunt Agatha, tears and all!"
There was some little difficulty in persuading Aunt Agatha of the truth of this, but she presently removed her hat, narrowly escaped dropping it into the fire, and consigned it, along with the athletic hand bag, to Johnny.
Now Diane with a furtive glance at Philip's camp, had been hostilely considering the discouraging effect of Aunt Agatha's presence upon the rival camper. That Aunt Agatha would presently discern degenerative traces of criminality in his face by reason of his reprehensible proximity to her niece's camp, Diane did not doubt. That the aggrieved lady would call upon him within a day or so and air her rigid notions of propriety and convention, was well within the range of probability. Wherefore-Aunt Agatha broke plaintively in upon her thoughts.
"If you would only listen, Diane!" she complained. "I've spoken three times of your grandfather's old estate and dear knows you ought to remember it--"
"I beg your pardon, Aunt!" stammered the girl sincerely.
"Certainly," said Aunt Agatha with dignity, "I deserve some attention. What with the dark, gloomy rooms of the house and the cobwebs and cranky spiders--and the people of St. Augustine believing it to be haunted--so that I could scarcely keep a servant--and green mould in the cellar--and a croquet set--and waiting down South when I distinctly promised to go back with the Sherrills in March--I take it very hard of you, Diane, to be so absent-minded. Ugh! How dark the lake has grown and the wind and the noise of the water. There's hardly a star. Diane, I do wonder how you stand it. The shore looks like bands of mourning crepe. And in the midst of it all, Diane, there in St. Augustine, the Baron aeroplaned the top off the Carroll's orchard--"