Sitting next to his aunt, with his arm on the back of her chair, Harry, after a cough or two and a furtive look at Kenneth, began to unfold his plan. He wanted to invite five or six swells to his house across the way, he said. He had thought of it when he was a boy and spent a vacation with Tom Haynes in Kentucky. Tom had had one the fall before and so had another comrade, and when they heard of his big house untenanted, they said it was just the place “to paint red,” off there in the country, where no one could be disturbed with their nightly revels, or threaten them with the police, as had once been done. “I told them the house was scarcely habitable,” he said, “and that only made them the fiercer. It would be like camping out, and they are resolved to come.” “And do they still think us ‘niggers’?” Kenneth asked, remembering Hal’s letter. “Oh, pshaw!” was Harry’s laughing reply. “That was all a joke. Tom and the rest of ’em know you are a rising doctor, and that uncle and aunt are the nicest old couple in the world. Aren’t you, Aunt Mary?” He had his arm around her neck, and was looking at her with the soft, pleading eyes to which she always yielded. “What is it you want me to do?” she asked, and he replied: “I shall get some women to clean up the house, and some one to cook for us. I did think of getting old Polly,—father’s nurse, you know,—but she has broken her hip, and none of the other Morris darkies want to come, so I must have some one else, and if you will overlook them a little and keep them going, and—and—if I could put up some cots in the ball-room, it would seem more like a picnic. Are you willing?” He was smoothing Mrs. Stannard’s hair and caressing her arm, while he waited for her to answer. “The ball-room is pretty dirty now, and there are twelve windows to wash,” she said, at last. “Oh, that’s nothing. None of the boys will care if the windows are covered with cobwebs, and I’ll get a woman to clean it up. You shall not be troubled at all. Now give in, like a dear old auntie.” She gave in as he knew she would, but the deacon objected. Six young fellows sleeping in one room would raise “old Harry” and keep him awake nights, he said, but he was finally overruled, as his wife had been. Hal guaranteed that the “old Harry” should not be raised, and that his guests should go to their cots in their stocking feet, and up the stairs which lead to the ball-room from the outside. Two or three of the steps were broken, but he would get them mended. In fact, he would do all he could to spare his aunt, who was again assured that she was the dearest old auntie in the world and the assurance emphasized with a kiss.