Page:Emily Climbs.pdf/243

Again poor Aunt Ruth pushed back her chair. Again Cousin Jimmy followed.

“Do you remember how mad you were because people wouldn’t believe you? But your father believed you—he had confidence in his own flesh and blood. Hadn't he?”

Aunt Ruth had reached the wall by this time and had to surrender at discretion.

“I—I—remember well enough,” she said shortly.

Her cheeks were a curdled red. Emily looked at her interestedly. Was Aunt Ruth trying to blush? Ruth Dutton was, in fact, living over some very miserable months in her long past youth. When she was a girl of eighteen she had been trapped in a very ugly situation. And she had been innocent—absolutely innocent. She had been the helpless victim of a most impish combination of circumstances. Her father had believed her story and her own family had backed her up. But her contemporaries had believed the evidence of known facts for years—perhaps believed it yet, if they ever thought about the matter. Ruth Dutton shivered over the remembrance of her suffering under the lash of scandal. She no longer dared to refuse credence to Emily’s story but she could not yield gracefully.

“Jimmy,” she said sharply, “will you be good enough to go away and sit down? I suppose Emily is telling the truth—it’s a pity she took so long deciding to tell it. And I’m sure that creature was making love to her.”

“No, he was only asking me to marry him,” said Emily coolly.

You heard three gasps in the room. Aunt Ruth alone was able to speak.

“Do you intend to, may I ask?”

“No. I’ve told him so half a dozen times.”

“Well, I’m glad you had that much sense. Stovepipe Town, indeed!’

“Stovepipe Town had nothing to do with it. Ten years from now Perry Miller will be a man whom even