"Well," said Felicity, drawing a relieved breath, "I'm glad she's gone. She certainly is queer, just as mother said."
"It's a different kind of queerness from what I expected, though," said the Story Girl meditatively. "There's something I can't quite make out about Aunt Eliza. I don't think I altogether like her."
"I'm precious sure I don't," said Dan.
"Oh, well, never mind. She's gone now and that's the last of it," said Cecily comfortingly.
But it wasn't the last of it—not by any manner of means was it! When our grown-ups returned almost the first words Aunt Janet said were,
"And so you had the Governor's wife to tea?"
We all stared at her.
"I don't know what you mean," said Felicity. "We had nobody to tea except Great-aunt Eliza. She came this afternoon and—"
"Great-aunt Eliza? Nonsense," said Aunt Janet. "Aunt Eliza was in town today. She had tea with us at Aunt Louisa's. But wasn't Mrs. Governor Lesley here? We met her on her way back to Charlottetown and she told us she was. She said she was visiting a friend in Carlisle and thought she'd call to see father for old acquaintance sake. What in the world are all you children staring like that for? Your eyes are like saucers."
"There was a lady here to tea," said Felicity miserably, "but we thought it was Great-aunt Eliza—she never SAID she wasn't—I thought she acted queer—and we all yelled at her as if she was deaf—and said things to each other about her nose—and Pat running over her clothes—"
"She must have heard all you said while I was showing her the photographs, Dan," cried Cecily.
"And about the Governor at tea time," chuckled unrepentant Dan.
"I want to know what all this means," said Aunt Janet sternly.
She knew in due time, after she had pieced the story together from our disjointed accounts. She was horrified, and Uncle Alec was mildly disturbed, but Uncle Roger roared with laughter and Aunt Olivia echoed it.
"To think you should have so little sense!" said Aunt Janet in a disgusted tone.
"I think it was real mean of her to pretend she was deaf," said Felicity, almost on the verge of tears.
"That was Agnes Clark all over," chuckled Uncle Roger. "How she must have enjoyed this afternoon!"
She had enjoyed it, as we learned the next day, when a letter came from her.
"Dear Cecily and all the rest of you," wrote the Governor's wife, "I want to ask you to forgive me for pretending to be Aunt Eliza. I suspect it was a little horrid of me, but really I couldn't resist the temptation, and if you will forgive me for it I will forgive you for the things you said about the Governor, and we will all be good friends. You know the Governor is a very nice man, though he has the misfortune not to be handsome.
"I had just a splendid time at your place, and I envy your Aunt Eliza her nephews and nieces. You were all so nice to me, and I didn't dare to be a bit nice to you lest I should give myself away. But I'll make up for that when you come to see me at Government House, as you all must the very next time you come to town. I'm so sorry I didn't see Paddy, for I love pussy cats, even if they do track molasses over my clothes. And, Cecily, thank you ever so much for that little bag of pot-pourri. It smells like a hundred rose gardens, and I have put it between the sheets for my very sparest room bed, where you shall sleep when you come to see me, you dear thing. And the Governor wants you to put his name on the quilt square, too, in the ten-cent section.
"Tell Dan I enjoyed his comments on the photographs very much. They were quite a refreshing contrast to the usual explanations of 'who's who.' And Felicity, your rusks were perfection. Do send me your recipe for them, there's a darling.
"Yours most cordially,
AGNES CLARK LESLEY.
"Well, it was decent of her to apologize, anyhow," commented Dan.
"If we only hadn't said that about the Governor," moaned Felicity.
"How did you make your rusks?" asked Aunt Janet. "There was no baking-powder in the house, and I never could get them right with soda and cream of tartar."
"There was plenty of baking-powder in the pantry," said Felicity.
"No, there wasn't a particle. I used the last making those cookies Thursday morning."
"But I found another can nearly full, away back on the top shelf, ma,—the one with the yellow label. I guess you forgot it was there."
Aunt Janet stared at her pretty daughter blankly. Then amazement gave place to horror.
"Felicity King!" she exclaimed. "You don't mean to tell me that you raised those rusks with the stuff that was in that old yellow can?"
"Yes, I did," faltered Felicity, beginning to look scared. "Why, ma, what was the matter with it?"
"Matter! That stuff was TOOTH-POWDER, that's what it was. Your Cousin Myra broke the bottle her tooth-powder was in when she was here last winter and I gave her that old can to keep it in. She forgot to take it when she went away and I put it on that top shelf. I declare you must all have been bewitched yesterday."
Poor, poor Felicity! If she had not always been so horribly vain over her cooking and so scornfully contemptuous of other people's aspirations and mistakes along that line, I could have found it in my heart to pity her.
The Story Girl would have been more than human if she had not betrayed a little triumphant amusement, but Peter stood up for his lady manfully.
"The rusks were splendid, anyhow, so what difference does it make what they were raised with?"
Dan, however, began to taunt Felicity with her tooth-powder rusks, and kept it up for the rest of his natural life.
"Don't forget to send the Governor's wife the recipe for them," he said.
Felicity, with eyes tearful and cheeks crimson from mortification, rushed from the room, but never, never did the Governor's wife get the recipe for those rusks.
CHAPTER VII. WE VISIT COUSIN MATTIE'S
One Saturday in March we walked over to Baywater, for a long-talked-of visit to Cousin Mattie Dilke. By the road, Baywater was six miles away, but there was a short cut across hills and fields and woods which was scantly three. We did not look forward to our visit with any particular delight, for there was nobody at Cousin Mattie's except grown-ups who had been grown up so long that it was rather hard for them to remember they had ever been children. But, as Felicity told us, it was necessary to visit Cousin Mattie at least once a year, or else she would be "huffed," so we concluded we might as well go and have it over.
"Anyhow, we'll get a splendiferous dinner," said Dan. "Cousin Mattie's a great cook and there's nothing stingy about her."
"You are always thinking of your stomach," said Felicity pleasantly.
"Well, you know I couldn't get along very well without it, darling," responded Dan who, since New Year's, had adopted a new method of dealing with Felicity—whether by way of keeping his resolution or because he had discovered that it annoyed Felicity far more than angry retorts, deponent sayeth not. He invariably met her criticisms with a good-natured grin and a flippant remark with some tender epithet tagged on to it. Poor Felicity used to get hopelessly furious over it.
Uncle Alec was dubious about our going that day. He looked abroad on the general dourness of gray earth and gray air and gray sky, and said a storm was brewing. But Cousin Mattie had been sent word that we were coming, and she did not like to be disappointed, so he let us go, warning us to stay with Cousin Mattie all night if the storm came on while we were there.