“Slippers,” she continued, crossing them on the fender. “I think I’ll
take Caroline’s place while she’s gadding about with Arthur.”
Again I stopped her. She was not in Caroline’s shoes.
“Besides, Miss Dixon,” I added, “are you not a little premature in
offering to be a sister to me?”
“Never mind,” she replied, laughing; “call it housekeeper, if you like.”
“The imputation,” I answered, “is monstrous. I am a respectable
bachelor, and never had such a thing. And if I had, she would have
appeared before me in a fitting state--not a misfitting one.”
“Then we’d better make it sister after all,” she returned, “and my first
duty is to demand what you were doing when I came in.”
I glanced at the half-sorted piles of notes, cards, ancient invitations,
mementoes, and the hundred other matters which had doubtless been of
more or less importance in their day, and shrugged my shoulders.
“I know,” said Miss Dixon, “it is rather dreadful. Seems like reading
some one else’s letters. Let me help you.”
She put out her hand for the nearest packet. I placed my own firmly on
hers.
“Miss Dixon,” I said slowly, “who are you that you would plunge thus
recklessly into the tied-up part of a now reformed bachelor? That
particular bundle is least of all fit for a sister’s perusal.”
“If Caroline neglected her duty,” she retorted, “that is no reason why I
should do the same. I want to see them.”
“You had better take these instead,” I returned, pushing towards her a
tray of wedding cards.
“I insist.”
“You insist?” I replied, in the tone of one speaking to a naughty child.
“How old are you, Miss Dixon?”
She laughed.
“I think I am a good deal older than you, Rollo, in this respect; I
don’t keep letters as I did when I was a sentimental schoolgirl. I
destroy _that_ kind.” And she nodded towards the bundle.
“Indeed?” I said. “And why did you not tell me sooner? That would have
been valuable information to me at one time.”
“And why?”
“I might have written a good deal more than I did.”
“You never wrote anything unfitted for my sheltered youth,” she replied,
quietly smiling, and burrowing one foot deeper into the cavernous
recesses of a slipper.
“I don’t post all I write,” I corrected, “but I have written things that
would have amazed a Bassishaw--and thought twice about it.”
“Bassishaw doesn’t say much in his letters,” she said musingly. She and
Caroline were very good friends, and there had doubtless been a good
deal of inter-feminine confidence between them.
“But why don’t you post them?”
“Oh,” I replied offhand, “they are experiments. It is another way of
keeping a diary. Perhaps, after all, you may see them if you care to.
They are merely studies in moods.”