"Sakes!" cried Aurora, staring at him with round eyes. "Ask me something easy! Ask me something else! I can't do that." "You can. Of course you can, if you wish to. You have only to give some excuse." "An excuse? Not for a farm! I don't want to. I've bound myself. They expect me as much as anything. I couldn't back out. It's so near the time, too. Why, it's to make money for the Convalescents' Home. I'm a big feature of the show." "I know you are, and I have a perfect horror of what you may do. I can't bear to think of the public sitting there gaping at you and laughing." "The public will be composed of friends. It's all private. Give it up? Not much! I tell you, it's nuts to me! I expect to have lots of fun. You've never seen, Geraldino, how funny I can be. You'll see that night." "The voice runs that you're going to appear as a nigger mammy and sing plantation songs." "Oh, does it? Well, that seems innocent. What objection do you see to that?" "I did not call my request reasonable, dearest Aurora. I begged a personal favor. You know the sort of nerves I have. It is like pouring acid on them to think of you making a show of yourself." She laughed, but would not yield; she treated his proposition like a spoiled child's demand for the moon, and, after condescending to tease like a boy, he woke suddenly to the fact of being ridiculous. He dropped the subject with the abruptness that causes the opponent nearly to topple over in surprise. He had sat for a long moment in silence when, realizing that this appeared ill-humored and a piece of effrontery, he started in haste to talk again, choosing the first subject that came into his mind, which was a thing he had meant to tell Aurora this evening, but had not remembered until this moment. The wide distance between the subject he dropped and the subject he took up would show, it was hoped, how definitely he washed his hands of her doings. "If you have wished for revenge on our friend Antonia," he said, "you can be satisfied. She is in the most singular sort of difficulty." "Oh, is she? I'm sorry," said Aurora. "Bless you! I never wished her any harm." "I went to see her yesterday. I had saved up my grievance and felt the need to lay it before her. I think one should give an old friend who has behaved badly the chance to make reparation, don't you? After being angry as you saw me, I yet did not want to break with her. She was very kind to me when I was young. At the same time I could not let her rudeness to you pass. But I found her in such trouble already when I went to see her yesterday that I said not one word of my grievance. It will have to wait." "You needn't think you must pick her up on my account. I don't care. But what was the matter?"