“Are you laughing at me?” he asked, suddenly.
Betty’s face became, on the instant, demurely grave.
“How could you think it?” she murmured, looking up at him innocently. “What is there funny about you, Allen?”
“A good many things, I’ve come to believe,” answered Allen, ruefully. “At least, every time I see you, you seem amused.”
“I haven’t been amused very much lately then, have I?” she murmured, and once more Allen began to look savage.
“Stop it!” he said, and Betty looked at him, wide-eyed. Her mirth nearly bubbled over.
“Were you speaking to me?” she asked, and then at the look on his face she began to laugh and the more savage he looked the more she laughed.
Allen got up and walked to the other end of the porch. A moment later Betty’s voice, still choked with laughter, reached him.
“Allen, don’t be a goose,” she said. “Come here and talk to me. I won’t laugh. Truly I won’t.”
Allen came, still forbidding, and sat down beside her. He was quiet so long that she finally reopened the conversation.
“What’s the matter, Allen?” she asked, gently. “Are you worried about anything?”
At her changed tone he turned to her eagerly.
“Will you listen to me without laughing?”
There was a sparkle in Betty’s eyes but her lips were grave.
“Yes, anything you say,” she said, meekly.
Allen looked suspicious, but he went on, just the same.
“There _is_ something on my mind,” he said, so gravely that immediately Betty became grave too. “I’d like to tell you, little Betty, and then maybe you will realize why I haven’t been able to come around lately.”
Allen paused a moment, his hands clasped on his knees, his eyes thoughtfully upon them.
“I have a client,” he said at last. “He’s an old, old man. Though he retained me a week ago, it was only to-day that I was able to persuade him to put his last will and testament into writing. Poor fellow, he seems to have had a horror all his life of making a will. Thought that the moment he did, it would be the signing of his death warrant.”
In spite of the warm evening breeze Betty shuddered.
“I don’t wonder,” she said. “A will has always seemed a horrid thing to me.”
“But a very necessary one,” Allen reminded her. “The old fellow has considerable of this world’s goods and since he can’t hope to take them with him where he’s going, it’s only sensible to dispose of them justly before he goes.”