broke off and gave a little cry. The door had swung open suddenly and a hairy face was peering into the room.
“I left my stick.”
Mr. Hopkins discovered the unpleasant weapon leaning in the corner and withdrew as unceremoniously as he had come, banging the door shut behind him. Fifi’s aunt sat motionless until his footsteps left the porch. Then Aunt Cal went swiftly to the door and pulled down the latch.
“I don’t suppose he’ll try to rob us tonight,” she said grimly, “because he must know we’ll be prepared. But I’ll warn Percy to go around the yard several times during the night.”
“Rob you!” cried Fifi incredulously.
“Don’t excite yourself, Fifi,” commanded Aunt Cal. “Just rest quietly in that chair while I call up your mother.”
“I don’t want you to call up my mother.”
“Sit calmly and close your eyes and try to—try to count sheep jumping over a fence.”
“Am I never to see another man unless he has a cutaway coat on?” exclaimed Fifi with flashing eyes. “Is this the Dark Ages, or the century of—of illumination? Mr. Hopkins is one of the most attractive eggs I’ve ever met in my life.”
“Mr. Hopkins is a savage!” said Aunt Cal succinctly.
“Mr. Hopkins is a very attractive egg.”
“A very attractive what?”
“A very attractive egg.”
“Mr. Hopkins is a—a—an unspeakable egg,” proclaimed Aunt Cal, adopting Fifi’s locution.
“Just because he’s natural,” cried Fifi impatiently. “All right, I don’t care; he’s good enough for me.”
The situation, it seemed, was even worse than they thought. This was no temporary aberration; evidently Fifi, in the reaction from her recent fiancé, was interested in this outrageous man. She had met him several days ago, she confessed, and she intended to see him tomorrow. They had a date to go walking.
The worst of it was that after Fifi had gone scornfully to bed, Aunt Cal called up her mother—and found that her mother was not at home; her mother had gone to White Sulphur Springs and wouldn’t be home for a week. It left the situation definitely in the hands of Aunt Cal and Aunt Jo, and the situation came to a head the next afternoon at teatime, when Percy rushed in upon them excitedly through the kitchen door.
“Miss Marsden,” he exclaimed in a shocked, offended voice, “I want to give up my position!”
“Why, Percy!”
“I can’t help it. I lived here on the Point for more’n forty-five years, and I never seen such a sight as I seen just now.”
“What’s the matter?” cried the two ladies, springing up in wild alarm.
“Go to the window and look for yourself. Miss Fifi is kissing a tramp in broad daylight, down on the beach!”
III
Five minutes later two maiden ladies were making their way across the sand toward a couple who stood close together on the shore, sharply outlined against the bright afternoon sky. As they came closer Fifi and Mr. Hopkins, absorbed in the contemplation of each other, perceived them and drew lingeringly apart. Aunt Cal began to speak when they were still thirty yards away.
“Go into the house, Fifi!” she cried.
Fifi looked at Mr. Hopkins, who touched her hand reassuringly and nodded. As if under the influence of a charm, Fifi turned away from him, and with her head lowered walked with slender grace toward the house.
“Now, my man,” said Aunt Cal, folding her arms, “what are your intentions?”
Mr. Hopkins returned her glare rudely. Then he gave a low hoarse laugh.
“What’s that to you?” he demanded.
“It’s everything to us. Miss Marsden is our niece, and your attentions are unwelcome—not to say obnoxious.”
Mr. Hopkins turned half away.
“Aw, go on and blab your mouth out!” he advised her.
Aunt Cal tried a new approach.
“What if I were to tell you that Miss Marsden were mentally deranged?”
“What’s that?”
“She’s—she’s a little crazy.”
He smiled contemptuously.
“What’s the idea? Crazy ’cause she likes me?”
“That merely indicates it,” answered Aunt Cal bravely. “She’s had an unfortunate love affair and it’s affected her mind. Look here!” She opened the purse that swung at her waist. “If I give you fifty—a hundred dollars right now in cash, will you promise to move yourself ten miles up the beach?”
“Ah-h-h-h!” he exclaimed, so venomously that the two ladies swayed together.
“Two hundred!” cried Aunt Cal, with a catch in her voice.
He shook his finger at them.
“You can’t buy me!” he growled. “I’m as good as anybody. There’s chauffeurs and such that marry millionaires’ daughters every day in the week. This is Umerica, a free country, see?”
“You won’t give her up?” Aunt Cal swallowed hard on the words. “You won’t stop bothering her and go away?”
He bent over suddenly and scooped up a large double handful of sand, which he threw in a high parabola so that it scattered down upon the horrified ladies, enveloping them for a moment in a thick mist. Then laughing once again in his hoarse, boorish way, he turned and set off at a loping run along the sand.
In a daze the two women brushed the casual sand from their shoulders and walked stiffly toward the house.
“I’m younger than you are,” said Aunt Jo firmly when they reached the living room. “I want a chance now to see what I can do.”
She went to the telephone and called a New York number.
“Doctor Roswell Gallup’s office? Is Doctor Gallup there?” Aunt Cal sat down on the sofa and gazed tragically at the ceiling. “Doctor Gallup? This is Miss Josephine Marsden, of Montauk Point…. Doctor Gallup, a very curious state of affairs has arisen concerning my niece. She has become entangled with a—a—an unspeakable egg.” She gasped as she said this, and went on to explain in a few words the uncanny nature of the situation.
“And I think that perhaps psychoanalysis might clear up what my sister and I have been unable to handle.”
Doctor Gallup was interested. It appeared to be exactly his sort of a case.
“There’s a train in half an hour that will get you here at nine o’clock,” said Aunt Jo. “We can give you dinner and accommodate you overnight.”
She hung up the receiver.
“There! Except for our change from bridge to mah-jongg, this will be the first really modern step we’ve ever taken in our lives.”
The hours passed slowly. At seven Fifi came down to dinner, as unperturbed as though nothing had happened; and her aunts played up bravely to her calmness, determined to say nothing until the doctor had actually arrived. After dinner Aunt Jo suggested mah-jongg, but Fifi declared that she would rather read, and settled on the sofa with a volume of the encyclopedia. Looking over her shoulder, Aunt Cal noted with alarm that she had turned to the article on the Australian bush.
It was very quiet in the room. Several times Fifi raised her head as if listening, and once she got up and went to