through the town: that Ilse and I had been prowling in the park with Teddy Kent and Perry Miller till twelve o'clock at night. Aunt Ruth heard it and summoned me to the bar of judgment tonight. I told her the whole story, but of course she didn’t believe it.
“‘You know I was home at a quarter to ten last Thursday night, Aunt Ruth,’ I said.
“‘I suppose the time was exaggerated,’ admitted Aunt Ruth. ‘But there must have been something to start such a story. There’s no smoke without some fire. Emily, you are treading in your mother’s footsteps.’
“‘Suppose we leave my mother out of the question—she’s dead,’ I said. ‘The point is, Aunt Ruth, do you believe me or do you not?”
“I don’t believe it was as bad as the report,’ Aunt Ruth said reluctantly. ‘But you have got yourself talked about. Of course, you must expect that, as long as you run with Ilse Burnley and off-scourings of the gutter like Perry Miller. Andrew wanted you to go for a walk in the park last Friday evening and you refused—I heard you. That would have been too respectable, of course.’
“‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘That was the very reason. There’s no fun in anything that’s too respectable.’
“‘Impertinence, Miss, is not wit,’ said Aunt Ruth.
“I didn’t mean to be impertinent, but it does annoy me to have Andrew flung in my teeth like that. Andrew is going to be one of my problems. Dean thinks it’s great fun—he knows what is in the wind as well as I do. He is always teasing me about my red-headed young man—my r. h. y. m. for short.
“‘He’s almost a rhyme,’ said Dean.
“‘But never a poem,’ said I.
“Certainly poor, good, dear Andrew is the stodgiest of prose. Yet I’d like him well enough if the whole Murray clan weren’t literally throwing him at my head. They want to get me safely engaged before I’m old enough to elope, and who so safe as Andrew Murray?
“Oh, as Dean says, nobody is free—never, except just
