your
taking all this trouble for me, but I do, just the same."

Aunt Mary smiled all over. Everyone who passed them was smiling, too, and
that added to the general joy of the atmosphere. Aunt Mary felt proud of
Jack, and rejoiced as to herself. Her content with life in general was,
for the moment, limitless. She did not stop to dissect the sources of her
delight. She was not in a critical mood just then.

"Why don't you stick those flowers in your belt, Aunt Mary?" her nephew
asked, as they penetrated the worst of the human jungle, and the
preservation of the violets appeared to be the main question of the day.
"That's what the girls do."

His aunt looked vaguely down at herself. She had no belt to stick her
violets in. She wore no belt. She wore a basque. A basque is a beltless
something that you can't remember, but that females did, once upon a time,
cover the upper half of their forms with. Basques buttoned down the front
with ten to thirty buttons, and may be studied at leisure in any good
collection of daguerreotypes. Ladies like Aunt Mary are apt to scorn such
futilities as waning styles after they pass beyond a certain age, and for
that reason there was no place for Jack's violets.

"Never mind," he said cheerfully, having followed her dubiousness with his
understanding. "Just hang on to them a minute longer, and we'll be out of
all this."

His words came true, and they finally did emerge from the seething mass
and found a carriage, the door of which happened to be standing
mysteriously open. Within, upon the small seat, some omniscient hands had
already deposited Aunt Mary's bags. It did not take long to stow Aunt
Mary, face to her luggage, and she was barely established there before her
trunk came, too; and, although the coachman looked so gorgeous, he was
nevertheless obliging enough to allow it to couch humbly at his feet.

Then they rolled away.

Jack sat sideways and looked at his aunt, holding her hand. His eyes were
unfeignedly happy, and his companion matched his eyes. Neither seemed to
recollect that one was bitterly angry, and that the other was on the verge
of melancholia. Instead, Jack declared fervently:

"Aunt Mary, I've made up my mind to give you the time of your life!"

And Aunt Mary drew a sigh of relief in his words and anticipation of their
fulfillment.

"I'll be happy takin' care of you," she said, benevolently. "My!--but your
letter scared me. An' yet you look well."

He laughe