There were other foolish indulgences. Bows and artificial flowers that she had put on bonnets and worn in her own room with locked doors, then pulled them off and laid them away. She was so fond of pretty things, gay things, the pleasures of life—and she was always relegated to the prose! Other people wore finery with a serene calmness, and went about their daily duties, to church, on missions of mercy, and were well thought of. Where was the sin? Her clothes cost quite as much. Mr. Perkins was a close manager but not stingy with his wife.
She used to think she would confess to her mother about the dancing, but she never had. She ought to bring out these "sins of the eye" and lay them before her husband, but she never found the right moment and the courage. She had meant to deal them out to the Leverett girls, especially Electa—but Electa seemed to prosper so amazingly! She must do something with them, and clear up her life, sweep, and garnish before the summons came. She was getting to be old now, and if she went off suddenly someone would come in and take possession and scatter her treasures. Likely as not it would be the Perkinses, for she hadn't made any will.
Why shouldn't Betty have some of them and go off on her good time. It wouldn't be housekeeping and spinning and looking after fractious children. But those evenings out on the stoop, and the timid invitations to take a walk, the pressure of the hand, the smile out of the eyes—oh, why——
All her life she had been asking "Why?"—taking the hard and distasteful because she thought there was a virtue in it, not because she had been trained to believe goodness must have a severe side and that really pleasant things were wicked. The "Whys" had never been answered, much as she had prayed about them.
She would never take the girl to bring up now. As for Doris Adams—Cousin Winthrop would be thinking presently that the ground wasn't good enough for her to walk on. So there was only Betty, unless she took up some of the Perkins girls. Abby was rather nice. But, after all, her father was only a half-brother to Aunt Priscilla's husband. And she must make that will.
"Missus, aint you goin' to come to supper? I told you 'twas ready full five minutes ago," said an aggrieved voice.
Aunt Priscilla sprang up and gave herself a kind of mental shaking. She stepped around to avoid the little girl on the rug with the cat in her lap. Polly went on grumbling. The toast was cold, the tea had drawn too long, and for once the mistress never said a word in dispraise.
"She's goin' off," thought Polly. "That's a bad sign, though she does sit over the fire a good deal, and you can't tell by that. Land alive! I hope she'll live my time out, or I'll sure have to go to the poorhouse!"
Aunt Priscilla went back to her fire and the vision of the little girl who had made a curious impression on her by a kind of sweetness quite new in her experience. It had disturbed her greatly. Nothing about the child had been as she supposed.
Everybody went down to her, which meant that she had some subtle, indescribable charm, but Aunt Priscilla would have said she had no dictionary words to explain it, though there had been a speller and definer in her day.