Tish | Page 3

Bettina on the subject of
Jasper.
"He seems a nice boy," she remarked. Aggie's idea of a nice boy is one
who in summer wears fresh flannels outside, in winter less
conspicuously. "Does he live near?"
"Next door," sweetly but coolly.
"He is very good-looking."
"Ears spoil him--too large."
"Does he come around--er--often?"
"Only two or three times a day. On Sunday, of course, we see more of
him."
Aggie looked at me in the moonlight. Clearly the young man from the
next door needed watching. It was well we had come.

"I suppose you like the same things?" she suggested. "Similar tastes
and--er--all that?"
Bettina stretched her arms over her head and yawned.
"Not so you could notice it," she said coolly. "I can't thick of anything
we agree on. He is an Episcopalian; I'm a Presbyterian. He approves of
suffrage for women; I do not. He is a Republican; I'm a Progressive. He
disapproves of large families; I approve of them, if people can afford
them."
Aggie sat straight up. "I hope you don't discuss that!" she exclaimed.
Bettina smiled. "How nice to find that you are really just nice elderly
ladies after all!" she said. "Of course we discuss it. Is it anything to be
ashamed of?"
"When I was a girl," I said tartly, "we married first and discussed those
things afterward."
"Of course you did, Aunt Lizzie," she said, smiling alluringly. She was
the prettiest girl I think I have ever seen, and that night she was
beautiful. "And you raised enormous families who religiously walked
to church in their bare feet to save their shoes!"
"I did nothing of the sort," I snapped.
"It seems to me," Aggie put in gently, "that you make very little of
love." Aggie was once engaged to be married to a young man named
Wiggins, a roofer by trade, who was killed in the act of inspecting a tin
gutter, on a rainy day. He slipped and fell over, breaking his neck as a
result.
Bettina smiled at Aggie. "Not at all," she said. "The day of blind love is
gone, that's all--gone like the day of the chaperon."
Neither of us cared to pursue this, and Tish at that moment appearing
with Jasper, Aggie and I made a move toward bed. But Jasper not

going, and none of us caring to leave him alone with Bettina, we sat
down again.
We sat until one o'clock.
At the end of that time Jasper rose, and saying something about its
being almost bedtime strolled off next door. Aggie was sound asleep in
her chair and Tish was dozing. As for Bettina, she had said hardly a
word after eleven o'clock.
Aggie and Tish, as I have said, were occupying the same room. I went
to sleep the moment I got into bed, and must have slept three or four
hours when I was awakened by a shot. A moment later a dozen or more
shots were fired in rapid succession and I sat bolt upright in bed.
Across the street some one was raising a window, and a man called
"What's the matter?" twice.
There was no response and no further sound. Shaking in every limb, I
found the light switch and looked at the time. It was four o'clock in the
morning and quite dark.
Some one was moving in the hall outside and whimpering. I opened the
door hurriedly and Aggie half fell into the room.
"Tish is murdered, Lizzie!" she said, and collapsed on the floor in a
heap.
"Nonsense!"
"She's not in her room or in the house, and I heard shots!"
Well, Aggie was right. Tish was not in her room. There was a sort of
horrible stillness everywhere as we stood there clutching at each other
and listening.
"She's heard burglars downstairs and has gone down after them, and
this is what has happened! Oh, Tish! brave Tish!" Aggie cried
hysterically.

And at that Bettina came in with her hair over her shoulders and asked
us if we had heard anything. When we told her about Tish, she insisted
on going downstairs, and with Aggie carrying her first-aid box and I
carrying the blackberry cordial, we went down.
The lower floor was quiet and empty. The man across the street had put
down his window and gone back to bed, and everything was still.
Bettina in her dressing-gown went out on the porch and turned on the
light. Tish was not there, nor was there a body lying on the lawn.
"It was back of the house by the garage," Bettina said. "If only
Jasper--"
And at that moment Jasper came into the circle of light. He had a
Norfolk coat on over his pajamas and a pair of slippers, and he was
running, calling over