"
"Auntie, I accept your romance now," Tom replied. "You have infected us
all and make us almost unnatural with happiness."
"But now we'd better go to the house," Jim suggested. "It is about time
for the preacher to come and we don't want to keep him waiting. Ma'm,
I--"
"Are you calling me ma'm, again?"
"It was to remind myself of a time when I wasn't so happy and to make
myself doubly happy now by the reminder."
Coupling off and hand in hand they walked toward the house, ceremonious
beyond naturalness in acting out the spirit summoned by a woman steeped
in the essences of high-flown books. "The trumpet," she said when they
heard Margaret's dinner horn, and not even Tom, who could have recalled
many a rakish bout of a Saturday night and many an unholy laugh in
church of a Sunday, dared to smile at her. "You've caught me all right,
auntie, and I'm strutting like a bantam cock in the spring of the year."
"But don't destroy it all by saying so," she replied, pressing close to
Jim and peering round into his face.
Jasper and Margaret were waiting for them, at the table; and again
Margaret was never so surprised as when she heard that they were at that
moment expecting the arrival of the preacher.
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