“My dear, that makes no particular difference,” said she. “We cannot always do what we wish. I am your father’s sister, and it is proper that you should live with me. It was very much like your father to omit making me your legal guardian. Why he should have appointed Dickinson Abbott instead of me, I cannot imagine, but he did, and what is done cannot be undone. However, that is neither here nor there. I offer you a home with me. You are too young to live here alone, and there are other reasons against it also. It is quite out of the question.”
A profound silence followed this speech. The plan proposed by their aunt was so appalling that the girls were unable to collect their ideas sufficiently to reply. Mrs. Wentworth Ward took out her watch.
“I must return in the next train,” said she. “I have a charity association meeting at half after eleven. I preferred to see you all together and tell you this, rather than send for one of you to come to me, or rather than write to you. This room looks rather disorderly, I think. Honor, that is a wretched waitress of yours. When you come to Beacon Street, I will give you lessons in housekeeping. This place had better be rented; you cannot keep it up otherwise. Katherine, what have you been buying?”
The lady had risen and had been walking about the room on a tour of inspection, while she thus criticised. She was standing now in a little recess formed by the window curtain. On a table within it was the silversmith’s box, the lid half off, and in the paper which had wrapped it, the address “Miss Katherine Starr” being in full view. The tissue papers which covered the contents were ruthlessly drawn aside by Mrs. Wentworth Ward, and the silver mirror exposed to view.
“Surely you have not been buying this!” she exclaimed, holding it up and looking first at her own countenance reflected in the one side and then at the large monogram of “K. R. S.” engraved upon the frosted surface of the other.
“Why yes, Aunt Sophia! Why not?” returned her niece.
“How much did you give for it?”
“That is an awfully odd question, Aunt Sophia, but fortunately I don’t mind telling you. It was only fifteen dollars. It is a gem, isn’t it, for the price? And it matches the rest of my silver beautifully.”
“But where did you get the money to buy such a thing as this with?”