"Certainly," I said coldly. That was the way it was all along. Whenever
there was something to do that no one else would undertake--any
unpleasant responsibility--that entire mongrel household turned with one
gesture and pointed its finger at me! Well, it is over now, and I ought
not to be bitter, considering everything.
It was quite characteristic of that memorable evening (that is quite
novelesque, I think) that my interview with Jimmy should have a
sensational ending. He was terribly down, of course, and as I was trying
to pass him to get to the door, he caught my hand.
"You're a girl in a thousand, Kit," he said forlornly. "If I were not so
damnably, hopelessly, idiotically in love with--somebody else, I should
be crazy about you."
"Don't be maudlin," I retorted. "Would you mind letting my hand go?" I
felt sure Bella could hear.
"Oh, come now, Kit," he implored, "we've always got along so well. It's
a shame to let a thing like this make us bad friends. Aren't you ever
going to forgive me?"
"Never," I said promptly. "When I once get away, I don't want ever to
see you again. I was never so humiliated in my life. I loathe you!"
Then I turned around, and, of course, there was Aunt Selina with her
eyes protruding until you could have knocked them off with a stick, and
beside her, very red and uncomfortable, Mr. Harbison!
"Bella!" she said in a shocked voice, "is that the way you speak to your
husband! It is high time I came here, I think, and took a hand in this
affair."
"Oh, never mind, Aunt Selina," Jim said, with a sheepish grin.
"Kit--Bella is tired and nervous. This is a h--deuce of a situation.
No--er--servants, and all that."
But Aunt Selina did mind, and showed it. She pulled the unlucky Harbison
man through the door and closed it, and then stood glaring at both of
us.
"Every little quarrel is an apple knocked from the tree of love," she
announced oratorically.
"This was a very little quarrel," Jim said, edging toward the door;
"a--a green apple, Aunt Selina, a colicky little green apple." But she
was not to be diverted.
"Bella," she said severely, "you said you loathed him. You didn't mean
that."
"But I do!" I cried hysterically. "There isn't any word to tell how
I--how I detest him."
Then I swept past them all and flew to Bella's dressing room and locked
myself in. Aunt Selina knocked until she was tired, then gave up and
went to bed.
That was the night Anne Brown's pearl collar was stolen!