As Miss Eyester had opined, Miss Macpherson was taking her tonic, or about to.
"I've come to make a suggestion, Auntie," Wallie began, with a little diffidence.
"What is it?" Miss Macpherson was shaking the bottle.
"Where then?" She smiled indulgently as she measured out the medicine.
"Why not California or Arizona?" he suggested.
"I don't believe this tonic helps me a particle." She made a wry face as she swallowed it.
"That's it," he declared, eagerly. "You need a change--we both do."
"I'm too set in my ways to enjoy new experiences, and I don't like strangers. We might catch contagious diseases, and there is no place where we could be so comfortable as in Florida. No," she shook her head kindly but firmly, "we will go South as usual."
"Oh--_sugar!_" The vehemence with which Wallie uttered the expletive showed the extent of his disappointment.
"Wallie! I'm surprised at you!" She regarded him with annoyance.
"I'm tired of going to the same places year after year, doing the same thing, seeing the same old fossils!"
"Wallie, you are speaking of my friends and yours," she reminded him.
"They're all right, but I like to make new ones. I don't want to go, Aunt Mary."
"Don't you think you are a little ungrateful--in the circumstances?"
It was the first time she had ever reminded him of his dependency.
"If you mean I am an ingrate, that is an unpleasant word, Aunt Mary."
"Place your own interpretation upon it, Wallace."
"Perhaps you think I am not capable of earning my own living?"
Miss Macpherson was nearly as amazed as Wallie to hear herself saying:
She had taken two cups of strong coffee that morning and her nerves were over-stimulated, and perhaps with the intuition of a jealous woman she half suspected that "the girl from Wyoming" had something to do with his restlessness and desire to go West. The time she most dreaded was the day when she would have to share her nephew with another woman.
Wallie's eyes were blazing when he answered:
"I shall! I shall never be beholden to you for another penny. When I wanted to do something for myself you wouldn't let me. You're not fair, Aunt Mary!"
Pale and breathing heavily in their emotion, they looked at each other with hard, angry eyes--eyes in which there was not a trace of the affection which for years had existed between them.