"I'll bring them to your office to-morrow morning," Miss Ri called after him, but he only waved his hand with a parting "Shan't be there," and Miss Ri turned to Linda, laughing. "We always have it back and forth this way. He attends to my business, you know, and runs in often. Now that his mother and sister have left town, he boards at the hotel, and likes the home feeling of coming here to a meal. Nice boy, Berk is."
Linda had known Berkley Matthews all her life. As a little stocky boy he had come to play with her in Miss Ri's garden on some of the occasions when she was brought from Talbot's Angles to spend the day. Later he had gone to boarding-school, then to college, and she had seen little of him during late years.
"He'll be back," said Miss Ri nodding, "just to get the better of me. But to tell you the truth, Verlinda, he certainly is a comfort, for he looks out for my interest every time. I wouldn't have a house nor a field left by this time, if it had depended upon my kin folks. Don't be an old maid, Verlinda. When their very nearest and dearest are gone, old maids seem to be regarded, by the world in general, as things so detached as to have no rights whatever; their possessions appear to be regarded as so many threads hanging from them; whoever comes along in need of a needleful, makes a grab, possesses himself of such a length and makes off with it, never stopping to see that it leaves a gaping rent behind."
Linda laughed. Miss Ri's grievances were not many, but were generally those caused by her stepbrother's family, who lived not far away and made raids upon her whenever they came to town.
"Oh, well, you may laugh," Miss Ri went on, "but it is quite true. Why, only the last time Becky was here she carried off a little mirror that had belonged to my great-grandmother."
"Why did you let her have it? Your great-grandmother was no relation of hers."
"I know that; but she talked so much, I had to let her take it to get rid of the incessant buzzing. You know what a talker Becky is."
"But you like Mrs. Becky; I've often heard you say so."
"Oh, yes, I like her well enough. She is entertaining when she is talking about other people's affairs and not mine," remarked Miss Ri with a droll smile. "That is the way it generally is, I suppose. Well, anyhow, Berk Matthews keeps my business together, and I'm sure I am satisfied to have him run in when he chooses, if only to keep me in a good humor."
"I thought you were always so, and that you never got mad with fools."