"My dear, I am so sorry! I would get up if I could."
"But I wouldn't have you get up, dear Miss Maria. I just want you to lie still and get well. We don't need a chaperone!"
"I know you don't need one, my child, but I have never heard of a picnic at Croxton's Ford without a chaperone."
"But Zebedee's a grand chaperone," put in Dee. "He is that particular! Why, Dum and Page and I have never been chaperoned in our lives."
"Zebedee's the strictest thing!" maintained Dum.
"So he may be," smiled the old lady, although one could see that the twinges in her poor hip were giving her great agony, "but as perfect as he is, he is not a woman."
"Jessie Wilcox has never been on a picnic in her life without a chaperone, and I could not consent to one from Maxton unless it was perfectly regular."
A tap on the door disclosed the sympathetic Zebedee.
After a hasty donning of boudoir cap and bed sacque, he was admitted.
"Mr. Tucker, I am so sorry, but I cannot let the girls go on a picnic without a chaperone," said the old lady.
"Of course not!" and his eyes twinkled. "I'm going, though, and I am a perfect ogre of a chaperone, eh, Page?"
"Yes, something fierce, but Miss Maria says you are not a woman."
"That's so!" he said, puckering up his brows. We were mortally sure he was going to find a way. He always did. "How about Aunt Milly? She is perfectly respectable and would guard the young ladies like gold, I am sure."
"We-ll, I remember before the war we often went great distances with our maids. I think she would do. Please send her to me."
Zebedee rushed to do her bidding, but he evidently had an interview with Aunt Milly before he sent her to Miss Maria, as that old darky entered the bed chamber in a broad grin, tying something up in the corner of her bandanna handkerchief as she came.
"Milly, I want you to chaperone for me to-day," said the poor invalid, groaning as she tried to move a bit in her great mahogany bed.
"Sho', Miss Maria! Does you want me to do it wif goose grease? Or maybe you'd like dat mixture er coal ile an' pneumonia? Dat's a great mixture. 'Twill bun you up but it sho' do scatter de pain."
"I don't mean massage, I said chaperone," and Miss Maria laughed in spite of her sciatic nerve.