"A letter from Aunt Maria," announced Graham, appearing at the door of his mother's little sitting room, a large, square lavender envelope in his hand. He carried it gingerly between a thumb and finger, and as far as he could from his upturned nose, "I'd suggest, mother, that you put on my gas-mask before you open it!"

Gyp and Tibby laughed uproariously at his wit. Mrs. Westley reached for the envelope.

"Poor Aunt Maria, she must be so glad that the war is over and she can get her favorite French sachet."

Isobel perched herself upon the arm of her mother's chair.

"Hurry, read it, mother."

"I'll bet she's coming to visit us," groaned Gyp.

"Don't expect us to throw away money, sis! She never writes 'cept when she is coming. Break the news, mum; is it to be a little stay of a year or more?"

Mrs. Westley lifted laughing eyes from the open letter.

"She says she will come next Wednesday to spend a few days with us. She is very sorry that that must be all--she is on her way to New York to consult a famous nerve specialist. She sends love to 'the beautiful children.'"

Jerry was very curious--no one had ever mentioned an Aunt Maria! So Gyp and Graham hastened to explain that Aunt Maria wasn't a real aunt but was "only" Isobel's godmother and something of a nuisance--to the younger Westleys.

"She doesn't give us presents," Graham concluded.

"She's forgotten all the things she 'did promise and vow' when Isobel was baptized. She had a fad, then, for godchildren; she used to go around picking out the girl babies who had blue eyes. She was a friend of Grandmother Duncan's and mother couldn't refuse her. She has nine altogether and always gives them the same things."

"And every time you see her she has a new fad," added Graham. "Once she was a suffragist but she switched because the suffs didn't serve tea at their meetings and the antis did. One time she was building a home for Friendless Females and another time she was organizing the poor underpaid shop girls, and the next----"

"Mother, listen," broke in Isobel. She had taken the letter from her mother and had been re-reading it. "She says she's going to France next spring and she's thinking about taking one of her godchildren with her. She's studying French and she wants us to talk French to her while she is here----"

"Well, I guess not! I'll eat in the kitchen," vowed Graham.

Gyp commenced to chuckle. "Let's say a whole lot of funny things in French--like when Sue Perkins translated 'the false teeth of the young man' and Mademoiselle sent her out of class."

"Mother!" Isobel's brain was working rapidly. "I ought to be the goddaughter she picks out." She did not consider it necessary to explain to her family the process of reasoning by which the other eight were eliminated. "Wouldn't it be wonderful?" But her beautiful vision was threatened by the mischief written in every line of Gyp's and Graham's faces. "Mother, won't you make the children promise to behave?"

"Children----" snorted Graham.

"----if they act dreadful the way they always do when Aunt Maria's here, they'll spoil all my chances!" Isobel was sincerely distressed.

"My dear," her mother laughed. "Don't build your castles in Spain--or France--quite so fast. I am not sure I would let you go over with Aunt Maria. But Gyp and Graham must promise to be very nice to Aunt Maria because she is an old lady----"

"But, mother, she's not exactly old; she's just--funny!"

"Anyway, Gyp, she will be our guest."

"Make them promise, mother----"

"Oh, you're just thinking of yourself----" declared Graham.

"Children, let's not spoil this Saturday by worrying over Aunt Maria. Even though, sometimes, she is very trying, I know each one of you will help make her visit pleasant and we'll overlook her little oddities. Who wants to drive down to the market with me?"

Gyp and Jerry begged eagerly to go; Tibby had to take a swimming lesson; Graham was going out to Highacres to practice football; Isobel said she preferred to stay home; "one of the girls" had promised to call up, she explained, a little evasively.

Mrs. Westley smothered the tiniest of sighs behind a smile; Isobel was living so apart from the rest of the family, she never seemed, now, to want to share the activities of the others. Her mother had always enjoyed, so much, taking her biggest girl everywhere with her; she had not believed that the time could come when Isobel would refuse to go.

Driving through the city with Jerry and Gyp beside her, Mrs. Westley, still thinking of Isobel, turned suddenly to Jerry.

"How your mother must miss you, dear," she said. Jerry was startled.

"Oh, do you think so?" she answered, anxiously.

"I mean--I was just thinking--mother love is such a hungry love, dear."

"Well----" Jerry, very thoughtful, tried to recall the exact words her mother had once used. "When I was little, mother used to tell me a story. She said that her heart was a little garden with a very high wall built of love and that I lived there, as happy as could be, for the sun was always shining and everything was bright and the wall kept away all the horrid things. But there was a gate in the wall with a latch-way high up; I had to grow big before I could lift the latch and go through the wall--and she made lovely flowers grow over the little gate, too, so that perhaps I might not find it! I always liked the story, but once I asked mother what she'd do if I found the gate and went out of the garden for just a little while and she answered me that the garden would be very quiet, but the sun would go on shining because our love was there. Now I'm older I think I understand the story, and maybe coming here was like going through the gate. But if it is like the story, then mother knows how much I love her, so she won't be dreadfully lonely--only a little bit, maybe."

"What a beautiful story," Mrs. Westley's eyes glistened. "I would like to hear her tell it! Some day I want to know your mother, Jerry."

That was such a pleasant thought--her dear mother meeting Mrs. Westley, who was almost as nice as her mother--that Jerry's face grew bright again. She answered the pressure of Mrs. Westley's fingers with an affectionate squeeze.

Except for the first dreadful ordeal of facing her schoolmates and the hurt of Isobel's unkindness, Jerry had suffered little from the ignominy of the debate. And she had found that the girls, instead of laughing at her, envied her because Dana King had so gallantly come to her rescue!

"You should have seen Isobel Westley's face--she was furious," Ginny Cox had confided to her. And Jerry would not have been human if she had not felt a momentary thrill of satisfied revenge.

The attention of the younger Westleys was centered, during the intervening days, on Aunt Maria's approaching visit. Isobel was much disturbed over the dire hints which Gyp and Graham dropped at different times. One of Graham's friends had a pet snake and Graham had asked to borrow it "just over Wednesday."

"It'll strengthen her nerves better'n any old doctor," Graham declared, loftily.

"Mother, do you hear them----" appealed Isobel, almost in tears.

Isobel had been building for herself a rosy dream; she had even, casually, told a few of the girls at school that "in June I'm going abroad with my godmother, Mrs. Cornelius Drinkwater--you know her mother was a second cousin to the Marquis of Balencourt and the family has a beautiful chateau near Nice. Of course we'll stay there part of the time----" A very little fib like that, Isobel had decided, could hurt no one! She had lain awake at night, staring into the half-darkness of her room, picturing herself sauntering beside Aunt Maria through long hotel corridors, to the Opera, to the little French shops, driving beside Aunt Maria through the Bois de Boulogne and walking on the Champs Elysees, admired everywhere, envied, too. And perhaps, through Aunt Maria's relatives (it was very easy in the dark to pretend that there was a Marquis of Balencourt) she might meet a handsome, dashing young Frenchman who would go quite crazy about her, and it would be such fun writing home to the girls----

"Graham," and Mrs. Westley made her voice very stern. "You must not play a single trick on Aunt Maria!"

"But, mother, she may stay on and on----"

"If you'll be very good," Mrs. Westley blushed a little, for she knew she was "buying" her children, "while Aunt Maria's here I'll take you all to see 'The Land o'Dreams.'"

"We promise! We promise!" came in an eager assent.

"I'll tell Joe I don't want his snake," said Graham.

"I won't laugh all the while she's here," declared Gyp.

"We'll be angelic, mother," they chorused, and they really meant it.

Aunt Maria's arrival, an hour before dinner, was nothing short of majestic. The taxi-driver (by a slight effort of the imagination easily transformed into a uniformed lackey) unloaded a half-dozen bags and boxes; next there alighted from the taxi a trim little maid in black with a rug over her arm, a hamper in one hand, a square leather box, books and magazines in the other. Then, by degrees, Aunt Maria emerged, first a purple hat, covered with nodding purple plumes, then a very red face, turned haughtily away from the driver, whom she was calling "robber"; yards and yards of purple velvet hung and swished about her, while a wide ermine mantle, set about her shoulders, added the royal touch without which the picture would have been spoiled!

"Isn't she gor-ge-ous?" whispered Gyp to Jerry as they peeped over Mrs. Westley's shoulder.

Jerry thought Aunt Maria very grand--she was like the picture of the Duchess in her old Alice in Wonderland, only much more regal. It seemed to her that the entire Westley family should bow their heads to the floor--instead Mrs. Westley was embracing the purple and ermine in the most informal sort of a way!

"----such a train--a disgrace to the government, but then the government is going all to pieces, I believe! And ............