"But I did it!" she murmured. "Of course,--I _had_ to. The idea of letting your Boy go off without kissing him good-bye! Mary," she suddenly spoke aloud, addressing the Patient Aunt, who was following the trail too, picking up the siftings from the other's apron--"Mary, did you kiss him? There was really no need, you know, because you are not his mother. And it would have saved his feelings not to." The Patient Aunt laughed. She was very young and pretty, and the "patient" in her name had to do only with her manner of bearing the Boy. "No, I didn't," she said. "I didn't dare to, after I saw him wipe yours off!" "_Mary!_" "With the back of his hand. I am not near-sighted. Now _why_ should a well-meaning little kiss distress a Boy like that? That's what I want to know." "It didn't once," sighed the Mother, gently. "Not when he was a baby. I'm glad I got in a great many of them then, while I had a chance. It was the trousers that did it, Mary. From the minute he put on trousers he objected to being kissed. I put his kilts on again one day, and he let me kiss him." "But it was a bribe to get you to take them off," laughed the Patient Aunt, wickedly. "I remember;--I was there. And you took them off to pay for that kiss. You can't deny it, Bess." "Yes, I took them off--and after that I kissed _them_. It was next best. Mary, does it seem very _awful_ quiet here to you?" "Awful. I never heard anything like it in my life. I'm going to let something drop and make a noise." She dropped a tin trumpet, but it fell on the thick rug, and they scarcely heard it. The front gate clicked softly, and the Father came striding up the walk, whistling exaggeratedly. He had ridden down to the corner with the Boy. "Well, well, well," he said; "now I shall go to work. I'm going up to my den, girls, and I don't want to be called away for anything or anybody lower than a President or the minister. This is my first good chance to work for ten years." Which showed how old the Boy was. He was rather young to go off alone on a journey, but a neighbor half a mile down the glary white road was going his way, and would take him in charge. The neighbor was lame, and the Boy thought he was going to take charge of the neighbor. It was as well. Nobody had undeceived him. In a little over half an hour--three-quarters at most--the trail of the Boy was wiped out. Then the Patient Aunt and the Mother sat down peacefully and undisturbed to their sewing. Everything was very spruce and cleared up. The Mother was thinking of that, and of how very, very still it was. She wished the Patient Aunt would begin to sing, or a door would slam somewhere. "Dear me!" she thought, with a tremulous little smile, "here I am wanting to hear a door slam already! Any one wouldn't think I'd had a special set of door nerves for years!" She started in to rock briskly. There used to be a board that creaked by the west window. Why didn't it creak now? The Mother tried to make it.