Grandmother Lawrence was my worldly grandmother, and when she was at home we tried to live in as good style as possible that she might be pleased with us. Always it had been a sorrow to her that my mother had married a poor man, and she was quite resolved that no such catastrophe should happen to Auntie May.
"I would rather see May dead," I have heard her declare dramatically, "yes, dead at my feet, than married to a poor man!"
She never said this when my father was around; but he knew as well as the rest of us that Auntie May was destined for great things.
She was so pretty, Auntie May was. Sometimes she let me stay in her room when she did her hair before the glass, and I would handle its soft lengths fondly.
"Auntie May," I asked once, peeping over her shoulder into the mirror, "may I be your bridesmaid?"
First she flushed up and laughed, and then she leaned back in the chair, and gazed at me, wretchedly.
"Rhoda," she said, "I am the most miserable girl in the whole world!"
That was the day that grandmother and granddad Lawrence came home, and there was a stir all through their big house and our little one, and Auntie May was back in her own room, surrounded by all the pretty things that were particularly hers. She looked around it, consideringly. There were roses on the carpet, and roses on the big arm-chairs, and roses climbed up the walls and fell in festoons about the ceiling. There was a white fur rug in front of the fire-place, and a silver glitter on the bureau. Auntie May looked at it all in quite a discontented fashion.
"I like things plainer," she said, plaintively.
Her lip trembled.