Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/250

 when Aunt Martha died they got up this plan for me to come down and live with them, for they couldn’t afford it quite, alone, and then I could chaperon them.”

Aunt Julia delivered herself of this phrase with a certain complacency. Mr. Bean looked up sharply.

“That means that nobody gets a show to abduct ’em while you’re around, I take it?” he inquired.

“We-ell, not exactly,” she demurred.

“But that’s the idea? I thought so. Yes. How old is Lizzie now? Thirty?”

“Oh, no, Cousin Lorando; L—Elise isn’t twenty-nine yet. Carolyn is about thirty.”

“I don’t seem to recall any one chaperoning you and Hattie when you were thirty,” he suggested thoughtfully.

She laughed involuntarily.

“Oh, Hattie was married, Cousin Lorando, and the children were ten years old! And, anyway, it was different then.”