up behind with unspeakable elastic things.
You'd make allowances if you knew what I've gone through since the day
before yesterday, when I found, after telegraphing a frantic appeal to
my aunt in Scotland, that she's left home and they could give me no
address. I've had an awful time. My nerves are shattered."

"Then you'd better secure peace by securing me. An aunt in the hand is
worth two in the bush."

"A good aunt needs no bush. I mean--oh, I don't know what I mean; but,
of course, I ask nothing better than to secure you."

"No; you mean you think you'll _get_ nothing better. Ha, ha! I agree
with you. But Tibe and I didn't come here to be played with. You're
giving us a very good lunch, but I have his future and mine to think of.
I admit, I'm in want of an engagement as a traveling companion to ladies
in Holland; but you aren't the only person to whom it occurs to put ads
in Dutch papers. If you'd searched the columns of _Het Nieus van den
Dag_ you might have seen mine. I have not been without answers, and I
don't know that I should care to be an aunt, anyway. It makes one seem
so _old_. What I came to say was that, unless you can offer me an
immediate engagement----"

"Oh, I can and do. I beg of you to be my aunt from this moment."

"Tibe to travel with me and have every comfort?"

"Yes, yes, and luxury."

"A pint of warm milk every morning, half a pound of best beef or chicken
with vegetables at noon, two new-laid eggs at----"

"Certainly. He has but to choose--he seems to know his own mind pretty
well."

"I don't think it a subject for joking. That duck was close to the edge
of the table. We'd better talk _business_. Your letter said a hundred
gulden a week to a suitable aunt, and a two months' engagement certain.
Well, it's not enough. I should want at least three hundred dollars
extra, down in advance (I can't do it in gulden in my head) for _your_
sake."

"For my sake?"

"Don't you see, to do you credit as a relative, I must have things, nice
things, plenty of nice things? Tartan blouses, and if not Tams,
cairngorms. Yes, a cairngorm brooch would be realistic. I saw a beauty
yesterday--only two hundred gulden. No aunt of yours can go for a trip
on the waterways of Holland unless she's well fitted out."

"I've been admiring the dress you are wearing. It's wonderfully trim."

"Thanks. But it happens to be about a hundred years old, and is the only
one I have left. As for my hat, and boots--but T