“You’ll find the food here plain but wholesome, Joseph. And I guess you’ll always get enough. If you don’t I want you to tell me. I don’t hold with skimping on food. How’s your mother?”
“Quite well, thank you. She goes to Columbus today.”
Aunt Sarah sniffed. “Going to be a housekeeper at a hotel, she wrote me. A nice occupation, I must say, for a Teele!”
“There didn’t seem to be much else,” replied Joe.
“She might have come to me. I offered her a home. But she always was dreadfully set and independent. Well, I hope she don’t regret it. How was it your father didn’t leave anything when he died?”
“I don’t know, Aunt Sarah. We always thought there was plenty of money before. But there were a good many bills, and the paper hadn’t been paying very well for a year or two, and so——”
“I told your mother when she was so set on marrying John Faulkner that he’d never be able to provide for her. I’m not surprised.”
“But he did provide for my mother,” replied Joe indignantly. “We always had everything we wanted.”
“You haven’t got much now, have you? Giving your folks all they want while you’re alive and leaving them without a cent when you die isn’t exactly my idea of providing.” Aunt Sarah sniffed again. “Not that I had anything against your father, though. I always liked him. What I saw of him, that is, which wasn’t much. He just wasn’t practical. Are you like him?”
“Folks say I look like him,” said Joe coldly. He felt resentful of Aunt Sarah’s criticism.