Unostentatiously, he watched Mrs. Peyton, as she turned her attention to the tea tray, and noted the air of importance with which she continued her duties as hostess.
“Bring hot toast, Ito,” she said to the well-trained and deferential Japanese. “And a few more lemon slices,—I see another guest coming.”
She smiled out through the window, and a moment later a breezy young chap came into the room.
“Hello, folkses,” he cried; “Hello, Aunt Emily.”
He gave Mrs. Bates an audible kiss on her pretty cheek and bowed with boyish good humor to Mrs. Peyton.
“How do you do, Uncle Doctor?” and “How goes it, Lock?” he went on, as he threw himself, a little sprawlingly into an easy chair. “And here’s the fair Helen of Troy.”
He jumped up as Helen Peyton came into the room. “Why, Pinky,” she said, “when did you come?”
“Just now, my girl, as you noted from your oriel lattice,—and came running down to bask in the sunshine of my smiles.”
“Behave yourself, Pinky,” admonished his aunt, as she noted Helen’s quick blush and realized the saucy boy had told the truth.
Pinckney Payne, college freshman, and nephew of Emily Bates, was very fond of Doctor Waring, his English teacher, and as also fond, in his boyish way, of his aunt. But he was no respecter of authority, and, now that his aunt was to be the wife of his favorite professor, also the President-elect of the college, he assumed an absolute familiarity with the whole household.
His nickname was not only an abbreviation, but was descriptive of his exuberant health and invariably red cheeks. For the rest, he was just a rollicking, care-free boy, ring leader in college fun, often punished, but bobbing up serenely again, ready for more mischief.
Helen Peyton adored the irrepressible Pinky, and though he liked her, it was no more than he felt for many others and not so much as he had for a few.
“Tea, Mrs. Peyton? Oh, yes, indeed, thank you. Yes, two lemon and three sugar. And toasts,—and cakies,—oh, what good ones! What a tuck! Alma Mater doesn’t feed us like this! I say, Aunt Emily, after you are married, may I come to tea every day? And bring the fellows?”
“I’ll answer that,—you may,” said John Waring.
“And I’ll revise the answer,—you may, with reservations,” Mrs. Bates supplemented. “Now, Pinky, you’re a dear and a sweet, but you can’t annex this house and all its affairs, just because it’s going to be my home.”