“I'm a-going to,” sniffed Rhoda. “I feel it coming.”
“She is so lonely, Robert! It would break your heart to see her smile. How do I know she is? Oh no—no, she didn't say she was! But I saw her eyes and she let the little, white cat get up in her lap!”
“Proof enough,” the minister said, gently.
Between the two of them—the child at school and Aunt Olivia at home—letters came and went for six weeks. Aunt Olivia wrote six, Rebecca Mary six. All the letters were terse and brief and unemotional. Weather, bones, little white cats, liniment—everything in them but loneliness or love. Rebecca Mary began all hers “Dear Aunt Olivia,” and ended them all “Respectfully your niece, Rebecca Mary Plummer.”
“Dear Rebecca Mary,” began Aunt Olivia's. “Your aff. aunt, Olivia Plummer,” they closed. Yet both their hearts were breaking. Some hearts break quicker than others; Plummer hearts hold out splendidly, but in the end—
In the end Aunt Olivia went to see the minister and was closeted with him for a little. The minister's wife could hear them talking—mostly the minister—but she could not hear what they said.
“It's come,” she nodded, sagely. “I was sure it would. That's what the little, white cat purred when she rubbed against my skirts, 'She can't stand it much longer. She doesn't sleep nights nor eat days—she's giving out.' Poor Miss Olivia!—but I can't understand Rebecca Mary.”
“It's the Plummer in her,” the little, white cat would have purred. “You wait!”
Aunt Olivia turned back at the minister's study door. “Then you will?” she said, eagerly. “You're perfectly willing to? I don't want to feel—”
“You needn't feel,” the minister smiled. “I'm more than willing. I'm delighted. But in the matter of—er—remuneration, I cannot let you—”