"No, thank you," she summoned her resources. "We'll be getting home. But we'll just leave the horses here," she added a bit hurriedly, anxious to be off. Echoes were sounding along a length of hallway and she was not desirous of the prospect of seeing Mrs. Mosby--Aunt Loraine--who was apt to prove a most discordant fly in the ointment of harmonious hospitality. So she turned to go, but turned too late. The door opened again and another figure appeared, a brisk figure, at which the dead leaves of the porch bestirred themselves in vague, uneasy rustlings. Uncle Buzz stepped meekly aside and Mrs. Mosby--Aunt Loraine--joined the group, giving him a momentary withering glance. She was an inexorable woman, an inch taller than Uncle Buzz, who stood five feet three, but she matched him whim for whim in her attire. Her hair looked black in the graying light; in reality it was splotched and streaked with a chestnut red, colour not so ill as misapplied. Her dress rustled as she swept forward and there were numberless faint clickings and clackings of chains and bangles about her. A high boned collar with white ruching helped her hold her head even more proudly straight, and the smile she shot Mary Louise was heavily fraught with a sickly sweet though rigorous propriety. "You must come in, my dear," she lisped. "Such exhausting exercise! You wouldn't think of going one step further without resting. Here"--she reached out one hand toward Mary Louise, testing the meanwhile the security of the upper step with the tip of a shiny shoe--"the man will attend to the horses." "Man! Yes," Uncle Buzz recollected with a start. "Zeke! Zeke!" he began to shout again. "Come here, suh!" "Bushrod! Be still!" hissed Mrs. Mosby. Almost was Mary Louise tempted to accept and stay, he looked so helpless, in such terrific danger, standing there blinking at them, his eyes vaguely trying to focus, and so mildly blue. His head with the graying hair so closely cropped gave him an odd appearance of boyishness, to which the smart little bow tie added not a little. He was trim, dapper, in spite of the fact that his standing collar was a size or two too large; in spite, too, of the tiny, well-trimmed goatee. He looked like a faun in trouble. With a shadow of distress crossing his face, he gave ground and backed away, the lamp tipping perilously in his grasp. Joe sprang forward and rescued it, setting it on the porch railing. "We'd better be going, I reckon, Aunt Lorry. Miss Susie's all alone," he explained. Mary Louise recovered herself with a start. What could she be thinking of, letting Joe make her excuses for her? Somehow she felt a sharp little wave of irritation against him for it. She hastened to add, however, "Oh, no, Mrs. Mosby. Thank you so much. I really must be getting home. Aunt Susie _will_ be worried. It's quite dark." The little woman murmured something, and then, "And how is your Aunt Susie? I must call. Give her my love, be sure," all in one breath.