“Tom, you’re a goose,” she said severely; and then she added: “I suppose you don’t think it’s possible that he’s at all impressed with me. I’d like to have you know that we had a great deal of conversation. Why”—she threw a shade of weariness into her voice—“I had to go over most of the ground that I’ve been going over with you ever since I came. We had r up, of course. I really could not help speaking of it. One would think there was something actually profane about that poor little letter, the way the Bostonians avoid using it. And when I’d fairly made out my case, and he couldn’t deny it, he had to pretend, just as you do, that we Westerners make too much of it, when we don’t at all; and as if that was any answer!”
“The way you do,” observed Tom, sympathetically, “when I show you that you folks mix up the wills and shalls so there’s no telling which from t’other, and you get back at me by declaring that we say ‘hadn’t ought’ and a few things of that sort.”
And then they fell to it again in the old fashion, Kate protesting the absolute incapacity of the average mind for grasping the fine distinctions between those two auxiliaries, which, thank Heaven, have still not wholly lost their special uses on our Eastern coast, and finally, after various thrusts at local usage, ending with the charge that New Englanders more than dwellers in the West are guilty of dropping from their speech the final g, a point on which the impartial listener might possibly have thought that she had a little the best of it.
And while the good-natured dispute went on, another and more important conversation was being held in the house on the old county road, where Esther sat with Aunt Katharine in the growing twilight. She had slipped away from her grandfather’s as soon as supper was over to make the call. There had been so many of these calls since her three days’ visit there that no one was surprised at them any more or offered to accompany her. It was recognized by all that there was something of genuine intimacy between these two, an intimacy at which every one smiled except Kate, whose dislike of her lonely old relative seemed to increase with her sister’s fondness.
Aunt Katharine had heard the click of the gate as the girl came up, and for once she had hobbled down the walk to greet a guest. There was almost a hungry look in her eyes as they searched the bright young face, and her brother had not inquired more eagerly than she for the particulars of the trip. And Esther went over it all, with a cheery pleasure that warmed her listener’s heart, talking as she might have talked to her mother of the things she had seen and felt, gayly, without reserve, and sure always of the interest of the other.
It was a rare hour to Aunt Katharine. Not in years had any fresh young life brought its happiness so willingly to her, and her heart responded with a glow and fulness like the sudden out-leaping of a brook in the spring.
At the last Esther had said, a little wistfully, that she was glad these days had come so late in this summer visit. It was almost ended now, but its climax of pleasure had been reached, and the memory of it would be a joy forever.
“Do you have to go back, both of you, the first of September?” Aunt Katharine asked suddenly. “Why couldn’t you stay a while longer? They don’t need you at home for anything special, do they?”
The idea took definite shape as she caught the outlines of it, and her keen eyes kindled. “You like things here better ’n Kate does, and you’re older. S’pose you should stay at the farm and see what a New England fall is like—you can’t know your mother’s country without knowing that—and then spend the winter in Boston with Stella. She’d like it, and she’d let you into a lot of things you want to know about. I never cared much for pictures and music and such, but you do; and you or’ to have a taste of ’em while you’re young.”
She paused, and Esther said with a gasp: “Oh, that would be glorious, glorious! But the expense of it, Aunt Katharine! Father couldn’t possibly afford to let me do it, and I couldn’t pay my own way, you know, as Stella does.”