Are Parents People?

by Alice Duer Miller

Her sister Evelyn, who had produced one perfect flower—little Evie—demanded, "Did we motor thirty miles at midnight to dance in disreputable road houses?"

"No," said Georgina, "because in our day we did not have motors; but we did pretty well with the environment at our disposal. I remember that Evelyn was once becalmed on the Sound all night in a catboat with a young man, and Fanny was caught just stepping off to a masked ball in the Garden, only—"

"I was not," said Fanny, as one who slams the door in the face of an unwelcome guest.

"Imagine Georgy's mind being just a sink for all those old scandals!" said Evelyn pleasantly, but without taking up the question of the truth or falsity of the facts stated.

Although Georgy was the youngest of the three Hadley sisters she, being unmarried, had inherited the red-brick house in Maple Street. It had a small grass plot in front—at least, it would have been a grass plot if the roots of the two maple trees which stood in it had not long ago come through the soil. There was, however, a nice old-fashioned garden at the back of the house; and the sitting room looked out on this. Here Aunt Georgy's sofa stood, beside the fire in winter and beside the window in summer. The room was rather crowded with books and light blue satin furniture, and steel engravings of Raphael Madonnas and the Death of Saint Jerome; and over the mantelpiece hung a portrait by Sully of Aunt Georgy's grandmother, looking, everyone said, exactly as little Evie looked today.

It was to the circle round the blue satin sofa that people came, bearing news—from nieces and nephews fresh from some new atrocity, to the mayor of the town, worried over the gift of a too costly museum. Jefferson was the sort of town that bred news. In the first place, it was old—Washington had stopped there on his way to or from Philadelphia once—so it had magnificent old-fashioned ideals and traditions to be violated, as they constantly were. In the second place, it was near New York; most of the population commuted daily, thus keeping in close touch with all the more dangerous features of metropolitan life. And last, everyone had known everyone else since the cradle, and most of them were related to one another.

There was never any dearth of news, and everyone came to recount, not to consult. Aunt Georgy did not like to be consulted. One presented life to her as a narrative, not as a problem. There was no use in asking her for advice, because she simply would not give it.

"No," she would say, holding up a thin, rather bony hand, "I can't advise you. I lose all the wonderful surge and excitement of your story if I know I shall have to do something useful about it at the end. It's like reading a book for review—quite destroys my pleasure, my sense of drama."

That was exactly what she conveyed to those who talked to her—a sense of the drama, not of her life but of their own. The smallest incident—the sort that most of one's friends don't even hear when it is told to them—became so significant, so amusing when recounted to Aunt Georgy that you went on and on—and told her things.