She was fresh as a rose, and talked as if she and Cosimo had been old friends. Cosimo remembered the joke of Mrs. 'Ill, the plumber, Mr. Wellcome, and the chimney-sweep. Only for a moment had Aunt Jerry glanced at Cosimo's suit of tweeds. She had heard of Cosimo's bereavement, but, after all, a loss can be felt as deeply in tweeds as in anything else, and the glance had seemed to admit that perhaps it wasn't altogether a bad thing that the old custom of extravagant funerals, often at the expense of the needs of the living, was dying out. "We must all go sometime," her short silence seemed to say, "and those who follow us must take up the burdens we leave." Perhaps it was not all burden either. Aunt Jerry had forgotten the precise number of acres, but she remembered that Cosimo was now "eligible." Aunt Jerry was telling Cosimo how all at sea Amory had seemed during the past weeks, when Mr. Massey arrived with Mrs. Deschamps. They were followed a few minutes later by Miss Crebbin and _her_ young man, a Mr. Allport. And Mrs. Deschamps, too, greeted Cosimo as quite an old friend. "I shall never, never forget that wedding day, Mr. Pratt!" she exclaimed vivaciously. "That cake--the wretches! But they're always up to something, scaring you out of your wits with a jam-splash on the tablecloth or a spill of ink on your book--you've seen them, Mr. Pratt; they're a penny, and I've had dreadful turns with them! But I simply can_not_ call you 'Mr. Pratt.' It isn't like Glenerne here. I admit it's best to be on the safe side there, but at Oasthouse View we're a family party--aren't we, George? And don't I come on Sundays till you're sick of the sight of me and say, 'Here's that nuisance of a Nellie again?' He needn't shake his head," the bright little widow continued to Cosimo; "Geraldine thinks we go to church together, but really I'm making love to him--aren't I, George?" "Yes--yes, yes, yes," Mr. Massey hissed softly over his teeth, entering into the joke and smiling amiably about him. And Mrs. Deschamps confided to Cosimo in a stage whisper that it was already arranged that she was to be "Number Two."