My heart was beating, he looked so grave.
"Well," I remarked, "you have nothing to fear, you know."
"Father," he said, doggedly, "it"s about--it"s about--"
"Yes?" I encouraged him.
"It"s about this trip."
"This trip?"
"Yes. It"s about--father, _you"ll_ tell her--"
"Tell her?" I repeated.
"Yes. You tell her."
"Tell whom? Tell what?"
"Why, Aunt Letty."
"Aunt Letty! Tell Aunt Letty what?"
He blurted it fiercely:
"About her hat."
"Her hat! Her hat! Good Lord, what hat?"
"Why, her Sunday hat!"
"You mean her--"
"Why, yes, father! You know that hat."
I knew that hat.
"Do you object," I asked, "to your aunt"s best Sunday hat?"
His scowl vanished and his face broke into smiles.
"That"s it," he said.
"Don"t be alarmed," I a.s.sured him, keeping my own face steady--no easy matter, for, as I say, I knew the hat. "Don"t be alarmed, my son. She shall have a new one, if that will please you."
His smiles vanished. He seemed suspicious. His tone was cautiousness itself.
"But who will buy it?" he asked.
"Why, you!" I said.
He leaped to my side.
"_I?_"
"You," I repeated.
He laughed hysterically--whooped is the better word.
"You wait!" he cried, and, fairly dancing, he seized his cap and rushed madly for the door. It shut behind him, but as swiftly opened again.
"Oh, dad," he said, beaming upon me from the crack, "it"ll be a stunner!
You"ll see."
It was.
VI
AN OLD FRIEND OF OURS
"Oh, I know the town," I had told them confidently--had I not been there in 18--? But no, it was not my town. It was not my New York at all that we found at our journey"s end, but belonged apparently to the mob we fell among, bags and bundles, by the station steps, till from our cabman"s manner, when I mildly marvelled at the fare he charged us, the place, I suspected, belonged to him. Four days and nights we heard it rumbling about us. Robin got a mote in his eye, Let.i.tia lost her brand-new parasol, and I broke my gla.s.ses--but we saw the parks and the squares and the tall buildings and the statue which Johnny Keats never climbed. Reluctantly, for the day was waning as we stood on the Battery looking out at it across the bay, we followed his example. On the third afternoon Let.i.tia proposed a change of plans. Her eyes, she confessed, were a little tired with our much looking. Why not hunt old friends?
"Old friends?" I asked. "Whom do we know in New York, Let.i.tia?"
"Why, don"t you remember Hiram Ptolemy and Peggy Neal?"
"To be sure," I said--"the Egyptologist! But the addresses?"
"I have them both," she replied. "Mrs. Neal came to the house crying, and gave me Peggy"s, and begged me to find her if I could. And Mr.
Ptolemy--why can I never remember the name of his hotel?"
"You have heard from him then?"
She blushed.
"Yes," she replied. "It"s a famous hotel, I"m sure. The name was familiar."
"Hotel," I remarked. "Hiram must be getting on then?"
"Oh yes," she said, fumbling with her address-book. "It"s the Mills Hotel."
"And a famous place," I observed, smiling. "So he lives at a Mills Hotel?"
"I forgot to tell you," she continued, "I have been so busy. He wrote me only the other day, that, after all these years--mercy! how long it has been since he fed us lemon-drops!--after all these years of tramping from publisher to publisher, footsore and weary, as he said, he had found at last a grand, good man."