Free Aunt Crete's Emancipation by Grace Livingston Hill Page A

till she is brought to her senses, and make her understand that she's got to go right home. I'll tell her how she's mortifying you, and spoiling your chances of a good match, perhaps --- "
    "O ma!" giggled Luella in admiration.
    "I'll tell her she must tell Donald she's got to go right home, that the sea air don't agree with her one bit—it goes to her head or something like that; and then we'll make him feel it wouldn't be gallant in him not to take her home. That's easy enough, if 'tis them."
    "But ma, have you thought ab out your sprained ankle? How ' ll they think you got over so quick? S'posing it shouldn't be Aunt Crete."
    "Well, I'll tell her the swelling's gone down, and all of a sudden something seemed to slip back into place again, and I'm all right."
    This was while they were buttoning and hooking each other into their best and most elaborate garments for the peradventure that the people they were to meet might prove to be of patrician class.
    They had been somewhat puzzled how to find their possible relatives after they were attired for the advance on the enemy, but consultation with the functionary in the office showed them that, whoever Miss Ward and Donald Grant might be, they surely were at present occupying the apartments on the second floor front.
    For one strenuous moment after the elevator had left them before the door of the private parlor they had carefully surveyed each other, fastening a stubborn hook here, putting up a stray rebellious lock there, patting a puff into subordination. Mrs. Burton was arrayed in an elaborate tucked and puffed and belaced lavender muslin whose laborious design had been attained through hours of the long winter evenings past. Luella wore what she considered her most "fetching" garment, a long, scant, high- waisted robe of fire-red crape, with nothing to relieve its glare, reflected in staring hues in her already much-burned nose and cheeks. Her hair had been in preparation all the afternoon, and looked as if it was carved in waves and puffs out of black walnut, so closely was it beset with that most noticeable of all invisible devices, an invisible net.
    They entered, and stood face to face with the wonderful lady in the gray gown, whose every line and graceful fold spoke of the skill of a foreign tailor. And then , strange to say, it was Aunt Crete who came to herself first.
    Perfectly conscious of her comely array, and strong in the strength of her handsome nephew who stood near to protect, she suddenly lost all fear of her fretful sister and bullying niece, and stepped forward with an unconscious grace of welcome that must have been hers all the time, or it never would have come to the front in this crisis.

    "Why, here you are at last, Luella! How nice you look in your red crape! Why, Carrie, I'm real glad you've got better so you could come down. How is your ankle? And here is Donald. Carrie, can't you see Hannah's looks in him?"
    Amazement and embarrassment struggled in the faces of mother and daughter. They looked at Aunt Crete, and they looked at Donald, and then they looked at Aunt Crete again. It couldn't be, it wasn't, yet it was, the voice of Aunt Crete, kind and forgiving, and always thoughtful for every one , yet with a new something in it. Or was it rather the lack of something? Yes, that was it, the lack of a certain servile something that neither Luella nor her mother could name, yet which made them feel strangely ill at ease with this new-old Aunt Crete.
    They looked at each other bewildered, and then back at Aunt Crete again, tracing line by line the familiar features in their new radiance of happiness, and trying to conjure back the worried V in her forehead, and the slinky sag of her old gowns. Was the world turned upside down? What had happened to Aunt Crete?
    "Upon my word, Lucretia Ward, is it really you?" exclaimed her sister, making a wild dash into the conversation, determined to right herself and everything else if possible. She felt like a