“You ought to have done it before,” dictatorially. “You've known all along that Rebecca Mary was growing up.”
Aunt Olivia, like the proverbial worm, turned.
“I didn't know till Rebecca Mary told me,” she retorted; then the rebellion died out of her thin face and tenderness came and took its place. Aunt Olivia was thinking of the time when Rebecca Mary told her. She gazed past Duty, past the skirt across her knees, out through the porch vines, and saw Rebecca Mary coming to tell her. She saw the shawl the child was bringing, felt it laid on her shoulders, and something else laid on her hair, soft and smooth like a little, lean, brown cheek. The memory was so pleasant that Aunt Olivia closed her eyes to make it stay. When she opened them some one was coming along the path, but it was not Rebecca Mary.
“Good afternoon!” some one said. Aunt Olivia stiffened into a Plummer again with hurried embarrassment. She did not recognize the voice nor the pleasant young face that followed it through the vines.
“It's Rebecca Mary's aunt, isn't it?” The stranger smiled. “I should know it by the family resemblance.”
“We're both Plummers,” Aunt Olivia answered, gravely. “Won't you come up on the porch and take a seat?”
“No, I'll sit down here on the steps—I'd rather. I think I'll sit on the lowest step for I've come on a very humble errand! I'm Rebecca Mary's teacher.”
“Oh!” It was all Aunt Olivia could manage, for a sudden horror had come upon her. She had a distinct remembrance of being at the Tony Trumbullses when the school teacher came to call.
“It's—it's rather hard to say it.” The young person on the lowest step laughed nervously. “I'd a good deal rather not. But I think so much of Rebecca Mary—”
The horror grew in Aunt Olivia's soul. It was something terribly like that the Tony Trumbullses' teacher had said. And like this: