But Susie still interpreted Aggie's looks as a challenge, and the hymn of praise swelled on. "My dear--if John wasn't an angel of goodness and unselfishness--When I think how useless I am to him, and of all that he has done for me, and all that he has given up--" Aggie was trembling. She drew up the coat to shelter her. "--why it makes my blood boil to think that any one should know him, and not know what he is." Aggie dropped the coat in her agitation. As she stooped to pick it up, Susie put out an anxious arm to help her. Their eyes met. "Oh, Aggie, dear--" said Susie. It was all she _could_ say. And her voice had in it consternation and reproach. But Aggie faced her. "Well?" she said, steadily. "Oh, nothing--" It was Susie's turn for confusion. "Only you said--and we thought--after what you've been told--" "What was I told?" Horror overcame Susie, and she lost her head. "Weren't you told, then?" Her horror was reflected in her sister's eyes. But Aggie kept calm. "Susie" she said, "what do you mean? That I wasn't told of the risk? Is that what you meant?" "Oh, Aggie--" Susie was helpless. She could not say what she had meant, nor whether she had really meant it. "Who _should_ be told if I wasn't? Surely I was the proper person?" Susie recovered herself. "Of course, dear, of course you were." "Well?" Aggie forced the word again through her tight, strained lips. "I'm not blaming you, Aggie, dear. I know it isn't your fault." "Whose is it, then?" Susie's soft face hardened, and she said nothing. Her silence lay between them; silence that had in it a throbbing heart of things unutterable; silence that was an accusation, a judgment of the man that Aggie loved. Then Aggie turned, and in her immortal loyalty she lied. "I never told him." "Never told him? Oh, my dear, you were very wrong." "Why should I? He was ill. It would have worried him. It worried me less to keep it to myself." "But--the risk?" "Oh," said Aggie, sublimely, "we all take it. Some of us don't know. I did. That's all." She drew a deep breath of relief and satisfaction. For four months, ever since she had known that some such scene as this must come, she had known that she would meet it this way. "Hush," she said. "I think I hear the children." IX They came in, a pathetic little procession, three golden-haired couples, holding one another's hands. First, Arty and Emmy, then Catty and Baby, then Willie and Dick, all solemn and shy. Baby turned his back on the strange aunt and burrowed into his mother's lap. They were all silent but Dick. Dick wanted to know if his Auntie liked birfdays, and if people gave her fings on her birfday--pausing to simulate a delicate irrelevance before he announced that _his_ birfday was to-morrow. "Dickie, dear," said his mother, nervously, "we don't talk about our birthdays before they've come." She could not bear Susie to be able to say that one of her children had given so gross a hint.