"We thought," Aunt Cal remarked pointedly, "that we might meet you coming home!"
"Oh," I said confusedly, "we are--I mean we're going on directly--we're just waiting for Michael."
But Aunt Cal did not seem to be listening to my halting excuses. Instead, I saw that her eyes--and her thoughts with them, I guessed--had strayed beyond me toward the house dreaming there in the soft sunset light.
"My, how sweet it smells!" exclaimed Miss Blossom. "I wonder if those tea roses are still blooming? Do you remember them, Cal? They were the sweetest ones I ever knew! What d'you say we take a peek around?"
Aunt Cal seemed to come back with a start. "Get out if you wish, Rose," she said. "I hardly think I care to do so."
"Oh, come on," Miss Blossom urged. "Stretch your legs a little." She began, as she spoke, lowering her massive bulk onto the running board. We gave her a hand over the wall, though she was surprisingly agile for one of her size. The tall grass fell away before her as at the advance of a steam roller. "My," she exclaimed, "what a jungle!" She turned again, "Come on, Cal," she urged.
Aunt Cal seemed to hesitate. And then I saw that she, too, was getting out of the car. We came, all five of us, back to the garden. Michael was still absent. Miss Blossom sank panting on the edge of the fountain. "My land! It's just a crime to let a place run down like this!" she commented. "'Member the time we went wading in this fountain, Cal?"
But Aunt Cal, if she remembered, did not say so. She was standing erect, gazing about her. And it was not so much sorrow at the sight of the neglect and decay that I read in her face as regret for something that is past and gone forever.
Suddenly Michael came advancing toward us. "Hullo, there," Miss Blossom called. "Is the house unlocked? Could we go inside?"
To my amazement Michael nodded. "Yes," he said, "it's unlocked."
"But I thought you said," Eve began and then stopped.
"Good!" said Miss Blossom. "Then we can take a look around."
"Oh, no, Rose!" Aunt Cal spoke up sharply. "Not inside!"
"But why not?" returned the other matter-of-factly. "If the agent's so careless as to leave the place unlocked, he couldn't object to our going in. I'd just love to see how the old place looks--I hear it's just about as Carter left it."