Tom whistled. He was used to Kate now, and never really expected to have the last word. Returning to the subject of the hay-making, he remarked: “Grandfather was down there for a while this afternoon, to show us how fast we ought to work, I suppose—you ought to have seen him bring down the swath—but he couldn’t keep it up very long, and made an errand to the house; a good thing he did, too, or he’d have missed that call that tickled him so. I say, that fellow must have been a regular swell for all you girls to be so taken with him.”
“Who said I was taken with him?” demanded Kate. “It was his horse I fell in love with.”
“Well, the others were, if you weren’t,” persisted Tom. “Esther seemed to think she never saw such a young man.”
“She’s seen some that are a good deal nicer,” said Kate, with emphasis, and then she added rather irritably: “I shouldn’t think a fellow could have much to do who spends his time running round to find out what his great-great-grandfather did. For my part I don’t take much stock in that sort of thing.”
And on this point they were in perfect agreement. Tom, like Kate, had no great use for ancestors.
Meanwhile the shadows lengthened, and the two slow figures moving across the fields reached the end of their walk. That the days to be spent with Aunt Katharine would seem rather long, Esther fully expected. Yet she had wanted them. She had been honest when she said to Stella at parting: “Don’t pity me. I really like it!” and she wondered at the incredulous look with which her cousin had regarded her. With all there was of taste and artistic feeling in common between these two, there was something in Esther, something of seriousness and warmth, which the other partly lacked.
Possibly the girl expected—as Stella had warned her—that the old woman would at once mount the hobby, which she was supposed to keep always saddled and bridled, as soon as they were fairly in the house together, but as a matter of fact, Aunt Katharine did nothing of the kind. She talked, as they sat in the twilight, of Esther herself, of her work at school, and the things she enjoyed most in this summer visit, and then of Esther’s mother, recalling incidents of her childhood, and speaking of her ways and traits with an appreciation that filled the girl with surprise and delight.
“Your mother might have done something out of the common,” she said as she ended. “She was made larger than most folks, and with all her soft ways, she had more courage. She might have had a great influence. I always said it.”
“Mother has a good deal of influence now,” said Esther, smiling. “Father says there isn’t a lady in our town whose opinions count for as much as hers.”
“Of course, of course,” said the old woman, with a note of impatience creeping into her voice; “and the upshot of it is that she makes old ways that are wrong seem right, because she, with all her faculties, manages to make the best of ’em. She might have done better than that, if she’d seen.”