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“I guess I’ve got more spunk than you have,” I said.

“The trouble with Dick is this,” said Jill. “There is nobody else coming to see Aunt Tommy and he thinks he is sure of her. If you could tell him something different it would stir him up.”

“Are you sure it would?” I asked.

“It always does in novels,” said Jill. And that settled it, of course.

Jill and I fixed up what I was to say and Jill made me say it over and over again to be sure I had it right. I told her–sarcastically–that she’d better say it herself and then it would be done properly. Jill said she would if it were Aunt Tommy, but when it was Dick it was better for a man to do it. So of course I agreed.

I didn’t know when I would have a chance to stir Dick up, but Providence–so Jill said–favoured us. Aunt Tommy didn’t expect Dick down the next night, so she and Father and Mother all went away somewhere. Dick came after all, and Jill sent me into the parlour to tell him. He was standing before the mantel looking at Aunt Tommy’s picture. There was such an adoring look in his eyes. I could see it quite plain in the mirror before him. I practised that look a lot before my own glass after that–because I thought it might come in handy some time, you know–but I guess I couldn’t have got it just right because when I tried it on Jill she asked me if I had a pain.

“Well, Jack, old man,” said Dick, sitting down on the sofa. I sat down before him.

“Aunt Tommy is out,” I said, to get the worst over. “I guess you like Aunt Tommy pretty well, don’t you, Mr. Richmond?”

“Yes,” said Dick softly.

“So do other men,” I said–mysterious, as Jill had ordered me.

Dick thumped one of the sofa pillows.

“Yes, I suppose so,” he said.

“There’s a man in New York who just worships Aunt Tommy,” I said. “He writes her most every day and sends her books and music and elegant presents. I guess she’s pretty fond of him too. She keeps his photograph on her bedroom table and I’ve seen her kissing it.”

I stopped there, not because I had said all I had to say, but because Dick’s face scared me–honest, it did. It had all gone white, like it does in the pulpit sometimes when he is tremendously in earnest, only ten times worse. But all he said was,

“Is your Aunt Bertha engaged to this–this man?”

“Not exactly engaged,” I said, “but I guess anybody else who wants to marry her will have to reckon with him.”

Dick got up.

“I think I won’t wait this evening,” he said.

“I wish you’d stay and have a talk with me,” I said. “I haven’t had a talk with you for ages and I have a million things to tell you.”

Dick smiled as if it hurt him to smile.

“I can’t tonight, Jacky. Some other time we’ll have a good powwow, old chap.”

He took his hat and went out. Then Jill came flying in to hear all about it. I told her as well as I could, but she wasn’t satisfied. If Dick took it so quietly, she declared, I couldn’t have made it strong enough.

“If you had seen Dick’s face,” I said, “you would have thought I made it plenty strong. And I’d like to know what Aunt Tommy will say to all this when she finds out.”

“Well, you didn’t tell a thing but what was true,” said Jill.

The next evening was Dick’s regular night for coming, but he didn’t come, although Jill and I went down the lane a dozen times to watch for him. The night after that was prayer-meeting night. Dick had always walked home with Aunt Tommy and us, but that night he didn’t. He only just bowed and smiled as he passed us in the porch. Aunt Tommy hardly spoke all the way home, only just held tight to Jill’s and my hands. But after we got home she seemed in great spirits and laughed and chatted with Father and Mother.