“I’d ought to be kicked by cripples! I certainly had! If I ain’t the foolishest, forgettin’est woman ’twixt the two oceans! An’ it’s too late now. Oh! my suz a-me!”
Mr. Ninian laughed, and was more grateful to Aunt Sally just then than he had ever been before. Her evident, if comical, distress interrupted sadder thoughts and he promptly demanded, again:
“Well, what’s wrong now, neighbor?”
“Shouldn’t think you, nor no other sensible person’d want to go ‘neighborin’’ me, a body that can’t keep her wits about her no longer ’n what I can. Gabriella Trent, I’ve clean gone, or gone an’ clean forgot, that pink-and-white patchwork quilt I’ve been settin’ up nights to get ready for Jessie to take with her on the cars, to sleep in! Now—what do you say to that!”
The dramatic dismay on the good woman’s countenance sent Mr. Sharp into a roar of laughter which, this time, was wholly unfeigned, and even brought a smile of amusement to Mrs. Trent’s pale face. The picture her fancy evoked of pretty, fair-haired Jessica, bundled in the patchwork quilt on board a luxurious “sleeper” was so absurd that she forgot, for the moment, other and graver matters.
“No wonder, dear, with all the things you did and looked after, so that we might both leave home—no wonder you forgot. It was very kind of you to take so much trouble for the child, but she’ll not really need the quilt. The beds are well fitted on the sleepers, and Mr. Hale will care for her as if she were his own. Come. We mustn’t keep Mr. Ninian waiting and after dinner he wants me to meet one or two business men. About the mine, you know;” explained Gabriella, entering the carriage, whither Aunt Sally clumsily followed.
Fortunately, that big-hearted creature could always find a “way out” of most difficulties, and she promptly settled the quilt question, saying:
“Well, if she didn’t get it for a keepsake gift, it’s hern all the same and she shall have it a-Christmas, and you needn’t touch to tell me she shan’t. Even if I be to ‘Boston,’ come that day, an’ I have to badger the very life out of my son John to get him to send it to her then. But dinner, Gabriell’! I don’t feel as if I could eat a single bite. Do you, yourself, honey?”
This time Ninian felt as if he could shake her. He knew that it would be small appetite, indeed, Mrs. Trent would bring even to that fine menu he meant to lay before her, and here was thoughtless Aunt Sally almost intimating that dining at all would, to-day, be an indecency. So there was more real feeling than appeared in his rejoinder:
“Look here, Mrs. Benton! I wager that with all your present ‘suffering’ you’ll yet be able to make a good square meal. One, maybe, that it’ll tax my pocket-book to pay for!”