Colonel Wheeler and Mr. Harmon had departed, so a shout of agreement went up from the young Careys.  Nancy approached You Dirty Boy with a bloodthirsty glare in her eye.

“Come along, you evil, uncanny thing!” she said.  “Take hold of his other end, Gilly, and start for the barn; that’s farthest away; but it’s no use; he’s just like that bloodstain on Lady Macbeth’s hand,—­he will not out!  Kathleen, open the linen trunk while we’re gone.  We can’t set the table till these curses are removed.  When you’ve got the linen out, take a marble urn in each hand and trail them along to where we are.  You can track us by a line of my tears!”

They found the stairs to the barn chamber, and lifted You Dirty Boy up step by step with slow, painful effort.  Kathleen ran out and put two vases on the lowest step and ran back to the house for the other pair.  Gilbert and Nancy stood at the top of the stairs with You Dirty Boy between them, settling where he could be easiest reached if he had to be brought down for any occasion,—­an unwelcome occasion that was certain to occur sometime in the coming years.

Suddenly they heard their names called in a tragic whisper! “Gilbert!  Nancy!  Quick!  Cousin Ann’s at the front gate!”

There was a crash!  No human being, however self-contained, could have withstood the shock of that surprise; coming as it did so swiftly, so unexpectedly, and with such awful inappropriateness.  Gilbert and Nancy let go of You Dirty Boy simultaneously, and he fell to the floor in two large fragments, the break occurring so happily that the mother and the washcloth were on one half, and the boy on the other,—­a situation long desired by the boy, to whom the parting was most welcome!

“She got off at the wrong station,” panted Kathleen at the foot of the stairs, “and had to be driven five miles, or she would have got here as she planned, an hour before we did.  She’s come to help us settle, and says she was afraid mother would overdo.  Did you drop anything?  Hurry down, and I’ll leave the vases here, in among the furniture; or shall I take back two of them to show that they were our first thought?—­And oh!  I forgot.  She’s brought Julia!  Two more to feed, and not enough beds!”

Nancy and Gilbert confronted each other.

“Hide the body in the corner, Gilly,” said Nancy; “and say, Gilly—­”

“Yes, what?”

“You see he’s in two pieces?”

“Yes.”

“What do you say to making him four, or more?”

“I say you go downstairs ahead of me and into the house, and I follow you a moment later!  Close the barn door carefully behind you!—­Am I understood?”

“You are, Gilly! understood, and gloried in, and reverenced.  My spirit will be with you when you do it, Gilly dear, though I myself will be greeting Cousin Ann and Julia!”

XII

COUSIN ANN