"You engaged Anna Carter for us, aunt," remarked Letitia pointedly, and I could have applauded her gladly, if I had not been in my own house. The opportunities for being impolite are wonderfully curtailed nowadays. Etiquette says that you must be polite in your own house; you must be polite in other people's houses. Apparently, one can be impolite only out of doors.
"And I particularly told her," said Aunt Julia emphatically, "that the main thing was to keep the place spick-and-span. I made more of a point of that than I did of the cooking. Healthy young people don't want a lot of messy 'à la' dishes, but they do want immaculate living rooms."
"Oh, Aunt Julia—" Letitia began argumentatively.
"Oh, Aunt Julia!" mimicked the old lady. "Wait until you can afford to keep three or four servants before you put on so many airs. 'Oh, Aunt Julia!' Yes, and 'Oh, Aunt Julia' again! With your 'drawing-room' and your 'evening dress' and your menus you want a retinue of domestics. You think that all you have to do is to sit down and live artistically in the most inartistic and impossible city in the world. I say that, and I'm a good American, too. And there's no 'Oh, Aunt Julia!' about it, either."
I bit my lips, and impressed upon my mind the fact that I was in my own house. I should have liked to ask Aunt Julia to walk with me to the corner, so that I could say rude things to her. Of course her statements were absolutely grotesque and ridiculous, and both Letitia and I knew it. We exchanged sympathetic glances. I could have laughed in scorn at Aunt Julia. Letitia couldn't, of course, as her face was not in laughing order.
"In the meantime, Aunt Julia," I said with an effort—I had thought of addressing her as "Mrs. Dinsmore," but, after all, she was there at my invitation—"you see we have no servant at present. What can we do? Letitia can't leave the house; I am unable to cook a dinner; I could take a basket and sally forth to the delicatessen shops, but—"
"I'm here," replied Aunt Julia, spreading her hands whimsically. "Like the poor, I am always with you. And I assure you, you silly helpless things, that the situation is not too many for me. In fact, I am distinctly able to cope with it. My motto in life has been: Don't worry about being rich; don't bother about being poor; but do, for goodness' sake, make up your mind to be independent. That's it—independence. Do you fancy that a mere cook can either make or mar me? And yet, my dear Letitia, and my equally dear Archibald, I flatter myself that I am quite as good, socially, as anybody you are ever likely to meet. I have known the time when I have cooked an entire dinner, from soup to sweets, and sat at the head of my own table, in a low-neck dress and entertained my guests, who probably thought that I had lolled on a sofa all day, and read—er—Ovid!" she added maliciously.
This sounded horribly Sandford-and-Merton-y. I was Sandford, and Letitia was Merton, while Aunt Julia appeared to be that detestable consummation of all the virtues, Mr. Barlow. I nearly called her "Uncle Barlow," but haply refrained in time.
"I don't like the idea of your slaving, Aunt Julia," began Letitia, adjusting her mantilla.
"I don't say that I should select it as a pastime," asserted that lady, in her most formidable manner; "but when it is necessary—and it often is, even in the best regulated families (among which I do not class this household)—I am always on hand. The situation is mine, absolutely. You see my education was unlike yours, Letitia. I am saying nothing against my poor sister, Frances, your dear mother, who had her own views, but I assert that the average American woman is quite helpless and—and—the race suffers."