The Whirligig of Time Part 2

"I see. But suppose you can't tell which is the right thing and which the wrong one?"

"Ah, there you've put your finger on a real difficulty. You just have to think it all over and decide as best you can, and then, if it turns out wrong, you're not so much to blame. Then, your suffering is of the kind that you can't help. No one can do any better than what he thinks is right at the time.... Now get up, dear, I hear people coming."

"Well, thank you, Aunt Selina. What you have told me helps, an awful lot. Really!"

"I am glad, my dear," replied Miss Wimbourne, and when people entered the room a second or two later no one suspected the sudden bond of sympathy that had sprung up between the specimens of crabbed age and youth they found there.

"Cecilia, what's going to become of those two boys?" inquired Miss Wimbourne later in the evening, finding herself for the moment alone with her sister-in-law.

"I've been asking myself that question pretty steadily for the last twelve hours," answered Mrs. James. "I wish _I_ could take them," she added, impulsively.

"Hardly, I suppose." If any of the remarks made in this conversation seem abrupt or inconsequent, it must be remembered that these two ladies understood each other pretty thoroughly without having to polish off or even finish their sentences, or even to make them consecutive.

"Unfortunately," went on Mrs. James, after a brief pause, "the whole thing depends entirely upon Hilary."

"The very last person--"

"Exactly. Yet what can one do?"

"It seems quite clear to me," said Aunt Selina, choosing her words carefully and slowly, "that Hilary will inevitably choose the one course which is most to be avoided. Hilary will want them to go on living here alone with him; preserve the _status quo_ as far as possible. What do you think?"

"I am almost sure of it. But...."

"But if any of us have the slightest feeling for those boys ... Until they are both safely away at school, at any rate, and he won't send them away for a year or two yet, at any rate."

"Harry not for three, I should say.... That is, _I_ shouldn't."

Silence for a moment, then Aunt Selina:

"Well, can you think of any one that could be got to come here?"

Mrs. James fluttered for a moment, as though preparing for a delicate and difficult advance.

"I wonder," she said, "that is, the thought struck me to-day--if you--if _you_ could ever--"

"Hilary and I," observed Aunt Selina in calm, clear impersonal tones that once for all disposed of the suggestion; "Hilary and I Do Not Get On. That way, I mean. At a distance--"

The sentence was completed by a gesture that somehow managed to convey an impression of understanding and amity at a distance. Mrs. James'

subdued "Oh!" of comprehension, or rather of resignation, bid fair for a while to close the interview. But presently Aunt Selina, with the air of one accepting a sword offered with hilt toward her, asked, or rather observed, as though it was not a question at all, but a statement:

"What do you think of Agatha Fraile?"

"Well," replied Mrs. James with something of a burnt-child air; "I like her. Though I hardly know her, of course. I should say she would be willing, too. Though of course one can't tell.... They are not well off, I believe.... She is very good, no doubt...."

"Hm," said Aunt Selina serenely, aware that there was a conversational ditch to be taken, and determined to make her interlocutrix give her a lead. This Aunt Cecilia bravely did with:

"You mean--how much does she know about--?"

"About Hilary, yes."

"I rather think, myself, she must have found out through Edith.... I don't see how she could have failed to know. Do you?"

"I can't say, I'm sure. Edith had rather curious ideas, though she was one of the best women that ever lived. However, that is not the main point for consideration now. What I want to know is, can you think of anything better?"

"N-no," replied Mrs. James slowly. "I even think it would be the best possible arrangement, if--Oh dear, to think it should come to this--those poor boys!"

"Yes, I know," said Aunt Selina, briskly. "Now, that being decided, some one has got to put it to Hilary. Hilary will do nothing alone. She comes to-morrow morning, does she not? I think it should be settled, one way or the other, before she goes. Now who is to approach Hilary?"

"I don't know," faltered Mrs. James, rather bewildered by the other's swiftness of reasoning.

"Well, I do. James is the only human being I know who has, or ever had, any influence on Hilary. Now one of us has got to talk to James, and I rather think, Cecilia, that I could do it more successfully than you.

For the first time, that is.... Of course, afterward, you...."

"Yes, of course," murmurs Mrs. James.

"Very well, then; I will see James the first thing in the morning. I don't say it will come to anything, but there is a great deal to be gone through before she is even approached. We must do _something_. Living here alone, with their father...."

"Out of the question, of course." The conversation having, as it were, completed one lap of its course and arrived again at its starting point, might have perambulated gently along till bedtime, had it not been abruptly interrupted by the entrance of James, junior, come to say good-night.

A few days after the funeral, after they had gone to bed of an evening, Harry through the darkness apostrophized his brother thus:

"I tell you, James, Aunt Selina is all right; did you know it?"

"Oh," was the reply, "she gave you five dollars, too, did she?"

"Yes, but that's not what I mean. She's given me five dollars plenty of times before this."

"Well, what do you mean, then?"

"Well, she found me in the garden one morning.... Tuesday, I guess--"

Tuesday had been the day of the funeral--"and I had been crying a good deal, and I suppose she knew it. At any rate, she took me by the hand and talked to me for a while...."

"What did she say to you?" This question was not prompted by vulgar curiosity; James knew that his brother wished to be pumped.

"Oh, she didn't _say_ much. She was just awfully nice, that's all....

She told me--well, she said, for one thing, that I cried too much. Only she didn't say it like that. She said that going about and crying wasn't much of a way of showing you were sorry. She said that if--well, if you really _missed_ a person, the least you could do was not to go about making a pest of yourself, even if you couldn't really do anything to help."

"Oh."

"She said that the last thing that would please Mama herself was to think that all she had taught me came to no more than ... well, than crying. Then she said.... I don't think I'll tell you that, though."

"Well, don't, if you don't want to."

"She told me that, in a way, she realized I must feel it--about Mama--more than any one else, because I had been more with her lately than any one else--more dependent on her, she said, ..."

"Yes, I see."