"Do you really mean it?" she said.

I assured her that I was in earnest. She thereupon not only
expressed an interest in our undertaking, which was evidently
sincere, but, with characteristic impatience, wanted to begin the
first evening's reading on that very night. I disappointed her
sadly by explaining that we required time to prepare ourselves,
and by assuring her that we should not be ready for the next five
days. On the sixth day, I added, we should be able to begin, and
to go on, without missing an evening, for probably ten days more.

"The next five days?" she replied. "Why, that will just bring us
to the end of my six weeks' visit. I suppose you are not setting
a trap to catch me? This is not a trick of you three cunning old
gentlemen to make me stay on, is it?"

I quailed inwardly as that dangerously close guess at the truth
passed her lips.

"You forget," I said, "that the idea only occurred to me after
what you said yesterday. If it had struck me earlier, we should
have been ready earlier, and then where would your suspicions
have been?"

"I am ashamed of having felt them," she said, in her frank,
hearty way. "I retract the word 'trap,' and I beg pardon for
calling you 'three cunning old gentlemen.' But what am I to say
to my aunt?"