"My goodness, I didn't mean your kind; I meant the regular kind."
Jane was laughing. "But I mustn't laugh," she said, after a minute; "we must go to work. Let's see if we can find out how it all began. Didn't you and Aunt Matilda get on nicely at first?"
Susan considered. "Well, I don't believe we did. She was always so very sparing. Husband was sparing, and of course I'd had a good many years of it, but when your husband's gone and you've got the property yourself and have left it to an only sister who takes care of you, you don't like her being even more sparing,—putting you on skim-milk right from the first and chopping the potato peelings in the hash."
"But there must have been some good in the situation, or it wouldn't have been. When there's a wrong situation, the cure lies in hunting out the good, not in talking over the bad."
"You won't find any good in Matilda and me living together,—not if you hunt till Doomsday." Susan took a big sip of coffee and then shook her head hard.
"There's good in everything."
"I don't know what it was here, then. I was all ready to die, and the doctor said I couldn't live, and when I found out how Matilda was counting on it, I just made up my mind to live just to spite her. But it's been awful hard work."
Jane turned and seized her hand. "Well, maybe that's the reason for the situation, then. You see if she'd been different, you'd have died, but being a person who made you mad, you stayed alive."
Susan laughed a little. "I've been mad enough, I know," she went on; "it's awful to be up-stairs the way I've been and have to prowl down-stairs and run off with your food like a dog in an alley. I was always watching till I saw Matilda over that second fence and then racing for something to eat. I've been very hungry often and often, Jane, very hungry indeed,—and in my own house, too."
The tears came into the girl's eyes. "Poor Auntie!" she said. "Well, it's all over now and won't ever come back. You must believe me when I say so. Old conditions never return. The wheel can't turn backward. That mustn't be."