The violinist has got a rival. I'm sure he has. It's Mr. Easterbrook. He's old—much as forty—and bald-headed and fat, and has got lots of money. And he's a very estimable man. (I heard Aunt Hattie say that.) He's awfully jolly, and I like him. He brings me the loveliest boxes of candy, and calls me Puss. (I don't like that, particularly. I'd prefer him to call me Miss Anderson.) He's not nearly so good-looking as the violinist. The violinist is lots more thrilling, but I shouldn't wonder if Mr. Easterbrook was more comfortable to live with.
The violinist is the kind of a man that makes you want to sit up and take notice, and have your hair and finger nails and shoes just right; but with Mr. Easterbrook you wouldn't mind a bit sitting in a big chair before the fire with a pair of old slippers on, if your feet were tired.
Mr. Easterbrook doesn't care for music. He's a broker. He looks awfully bored when the violinist is playing, and he fidgets with his watch-chain, and clears his throat very loudly just before he speaks every time. His automobile is bigger and handsomer than the violinist's. (Aunt Hattie says the violinist's automobile is a hired one.) And Mr. Easterbrook's flowers that he sends to Mother are handsomer, too, and lots more of them, than the violinist's. Aunt Hattie has noticed that, too. In fact, I guess there isn't anything about Mr. Easterbrook that she doesn't notice.
Aunt Hattie likes Mr. Easterbrook lots better than she does the violinist. I heard her talking to Mother one day. She said that any one that would look twice at a lazy, shiftless fiddler with probably not a dollar laid by for a rainy day, when all the while there was just waiting to be picked an estimable gentleman of independent fortune and stable position like Mr. Easterbrook—well, she had her opinion of her; that's all. She meant Mother, of course. I knew that. I'm no child.
Mother knew it, too; and she didn't like it. She flushed up and bit her lip, and answered back, cold, like ice.
"I understand, of course, what you mean, Hattie; but even if I acknowledged that this very estimable, unimpeachable gentleman was waiting to be picked (which I do not), I should have to remind you that I've already had one experience with an estimable, unimpeachable gentleman of independent fortune and stable position, and I do not care for another."
"But, my dear Madge," began Aunt Hattie again, "to marry a man without any money—"
"I haven't married him yet," cut in Mother, cold again, like ice. "But let me tell you this, Hattie. I'd rather live on bread and water in a log cabin with the man I loved than in a palace with an estimable, unimpeachable gentleman who gave me the shivers every time he came into the room."
And it was just after she said this that I interrupted. I was right in plain, sight in the window-seat reading; but I guess they'd forgotten I was there, for they both jumped a lot when I spoke. And yet I'll leave it to you if what I said wasn't perfectly natural.
"Of course, you would, Mother!" I cried. "And, anyhow, if you did marry the violinist, and you found out afterward you didn't like him, that wouldn't matter a mite, for you could _un_marry him at any time, just as you did Father, and—"