"Really, Jeremy," said Aunt Amy, "to bother your mother so! And it's
nearly time you went to bed."

He brushed her aside. "You will keep her, Mother, won't you ?"

"It depends, dear," said Mrs. Cole, laughing. "You see--"

"No--we'll be bad with everyone else," he cried. "We will, really--
everyone else. And we'll be good with Miss Jones."

"Well, so long as you're good, dear," she said. "I'd no idea you
liked her so much."

"Oh, she's all right," he said. "But it isn't that--" Then he
stopped; he couldn't explain--especially with that idiot Aunt Amy
there, who'd only laugh at him, or kiss him, or something else
horrible.

Afterwards, as he went slowly up to bed, he stopped for a moment in
the dark passage thinking. The whole house was silent about him,
only the clocks whispering.

What a tiresome bother Aunt Amy was! How he wished that she were
dead! And what a bore it would be being good now with Miss Jones. At
the same time, the renewed consciousness of her personal drama most
strangely moved him--her brother who rowed, her neuralgia, her lack
of relations. Perhaps Aunt Amy also had an exciting history! Perhaps
she also cried!

The world seemed to be suddenly filled with pressing, thronging