However, as Anne led Tommy away, fairly stumbling with the sleep that was in his heels if not in his head, he turned, hung back, and said to Mr. Hugh, in a piping voice that could be heard above all the babble, “You needn’t have looked so scared, I wasn’t going to tell it just _zackly_ the way it was--nor about that picture Anne took of Miss Letty--nor--” but the closing door kindly shut Tommy off, and though the entire party suspected a joke of some kind, only one beside the conscious pair saw through the whole affair. This was Miss Jule, who had seen Mr. Hugh slip the photograph into his pocket that afternoon long ago, before the sixlets were born. She had also chanced to see from a distance the barbed wire fence episode, and for some reason known to herself a motherly smile of content lighted her plain features, until Letty, glancing shyly at her aunt, wondered why she had never before thought her fine looking.
Mrs. Carr’s various combinations of apples, nuts, candles, rings, flour, and pails of water, that go to make up Hallowe’en tricks, produced more good-natured fun, especially when Miss Letty, after swinging it thrice over her head, threw the apple paring over her left shoulder, causing Anne to exclaim at the initial it made, which was promptly eaten by Tip, who loved fruit, before any one else could decipher it.
Then the stage and brake came up, and there was a search for wraps, while Anne was astounded and mystified to find Miss Letty hugging poor Happy and stuffing her with cold chicken. She had been shut up supperless in a back passageway because she had been disobedient and spoiled the hunt, and had also gone too near the skunk.
Mr. Hugh’s horse had been put up in Miss Jule’s stable, so he rode that far in the brake with the others, and stopped off to get him. As there was no reason why he should wait outside in the cold, he went in with Miss Jule, who hurried off to make some coffee (Anna Maria having retired), as she said, to “settle their wits, after too much supper and too much laughter,” leaving the two standing before the hall fire, feeling equally awkward. Colin and Hamlet, who had stayed at home, hearing voices, came racing from the kitchen hall and greeted Letty with an unfeigned joy that tumbled her hair down on her shoulders, while Tip, not to be outdone, sprang upon the back of a near-by chair and, paws on her shoulder, gave her a kiss on the tip of the nose.