The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary | Page 9

the truth to save her neck. She means well, but she drives folks to suicide just for fun. She'd do anything for anybody in general, but when it's a case of you individually she won't do a thing to you, and you must heed my words and be forewarned and forearmed from now on. Mustn't he, Betty?"
At this the sister laughed, nodding quite as gayly as if it were a laughing matter, instead of the opening move in a possibly serious-- tremendously serious--game of life.
"It's awful to have to subscribe to," she said, with dancing eyes; "but I'm afraid it's true. I'm really quite a reprobate, and I admit it frankly. And everyone is so good to me that I never get a chance to reform. And so--and so--"
"But then, I suppose I ought to warn her about you, too," said Burnett, turning suddenly toward his friend. "It isn't fair to show her up and not show you up, you know. And really, Betty, he's almost as bad as you are yourself. I may tell you in confidence--in strict confidence (for it's only been in a few newspapers)--that he hasn't got his breach-of-promise suit all compromised yet. Ask him to deny it, if he can!"
The sister looked suddenly startled and curious and Jack felt himself to be blushing desperately.
"I don't look as if he was lying, do I?" he asked smiling; "be honest now, for you can see that Burnett and I both are."
"No, you don't," she said. "You look as if it was a very true bill."
"It is," he said; "and it's going to be an awfully big one, too, I'm afraid."
"I wouldn't have thought you were such a bad man," said the sister ever so sweetly; "but I like bad men. They interest me. They--"
"There!--I see your finish," said Burnett. "That's one of her favorite opening plays. It's all up with you, Jack, and your aunt will have to to go down for another damage suit when you begin to perceive that you have had enough of our family. But you'll have to get out now, Betty, and let him get dressed for dinner. You needn't cry about it either for he's even more attractive in his glad rags than he is in his railway dust--my word of honor on it."
"I look nice myself when I'm dinner-dressed," said the sister, "so I sympathize with him and I'll go with pleasure. Good-bye."
She sort of backed toward the door and Jack sprang to open it for her.
"You can kiss her hand, if you like," Burnett said kindly. "They do in Germany, you know. I don't mind and mamma needn't know."
"May I?" Jack asked her; and then he caught her eye over her brother's bent head and added, so quickly that there was hardly any break at all between the words: "Some other time?"
"Some other time," she said, with a world of meaning in the promise; and then she flashed one wonderful look straight into his eyes and was gone.
"Isn't she great?" Burnett asked, unlocking his suit-case in the most provokingly every-day style, as if this day was an every-day sort of day and not the beginning and end of all things. "Oh, I tell you, I'm almost dotty over that sister myself."
"Do you suppose that I could manage to have her for dinner?" Jack asked, feeling desperately how dull any other place at the table would be now.
"I don't know. When I go down to my mother I'll try to manage it; shall I?"
"I wish you would."
"I reckon I can; but, great loads of fire, fellow! don't think you can play tag with her, and feel funny at the finish. She'll do you up completely, and never turn a hair herself. She's always at it. She don't mean to be cruel, but she's naturally a carnivorous animal. It's her little way."
Jack did not look as dismal as he should have done; he smiled, and looked out of the window instead.
"She'll have to marry someone some day, you know," he said thoughtfully.
"Have to marry someone some day!" Burnett cried. "Why, she is married. Didn't you know that?" and he unbuckled the shirt portfolio as he spoke just as if calamities and tragedies and shooting stars might not follow on the heels of such a simple statement as that last.
It was an awful moment, but poor Jack did manage to continue looking out of the window. If any greater demand had been made upon him he might have sunk beneath the double weight.
"No," he said at last, his voice painfully steady; "I didn't know it."
Burnett laughed heartlessly, hauling forth his apparel with a refined cruelty which took careful heed of possible interfolded shoes or cravats.
"She married an Englishman when she was nineteen years old," he said. "That was when they sent me