"He ain't?" exploded Jeremiah. "He ain't? _Why_ not? Is the durn fool blind? I'd like to know why not."
Cecilia sank to a white marble seat. She was laughing helplessly. Suddenly she sobered and wiped her eyes.
"Dear," she said, "do you think I'd love you less, for--for loving some one else? Didn't you love the whole world more because of mamma? It only makes me want to be much nicer, and want to hug the earth!"
She covered her face as she finished, with slender, little hands. Jeremiah sat down by her.
"I want my bonnet with pink roses on it!" she whispered, "I _do_ want it!" He put his arms around her because he couldn't answer. A gull with silver wings swooped low. Cecilia uncovered her face, and kissed the brick king. "Which is my very prettiest dress?" she asked. "I want to wear it Saturday afternoon."
She tried to think her depression came from the night before, but half of it came from the letter which she held in her hand. She had had the strangest sinking sensation on reading it, and she _did_ love Marjory. Why it had made her feel that way was a mystery.
[Illustration: THE DINNER HAD BEEN WHAT SHE WANTED]
She opened the letter again. Its pages crackled, and sprung into their first folds as she laid them on the table. The third sheet she picked up and read: "Mamma is really quite wild about travelling with the Johnstons and I am absurdly relieved. Being with that dear lady tells on my disposition (usually perfect, you know, dear!), and I am happy to say a dutifully depressed good-bye to the water bottles and ailments which are all I know of my progenitor. I told her I would come to you for the summer months, and then perhaps go to Cousin Alice. I may go home, but I'm not sure, and such a course involves the proper dowager, who is always too proper, or too improper, and ever a bore! I shall write you again about all this, and when I shall arrive.
"Dear, I shall so enjoy being with you. You are the only good person I know who does not offend me. Perhaps because you are so unconscious of that quality. Your influence is wonderful with me.... How do you like being an 'Influence'? I have turned flippant, but you know I was serious----"
And that letter, in some strange way, had depressed Cecilia. She had wanted the summer to be a quiet one,--one in which she could learn to know a small brother, have ample time to amuse her father,--and----