“Now you know, I don’t understand that sort of talk, Arthur,” answered Aunt Polly. “I never studied philosophy or chemistry, and I’m glad of it. But I know it would have been better for Dorothy if Dr. South had stayed at home like a reasonable man, and married—but there, I mustn’t talk of that. Dorothy is a dear girl, and I’m fitting her for her position in life as well as I can. If I could stop her from thinking, now, or—”
“Pray don’t, Aunt Polly! Her thinking interests me more than anything I ever studied,—except perhaps the strange and even inexplicable therapeutic effect of champagne in yellow fever—”
“There you go again, with your outlandish words, which you know I don’t understand or want to understand, though sometimes I remember them.”
“Tell me of an instance, Aunt Polly.”
“Why, you said to me the other night that Dorothy was a ‘psychological enigma’ to your mind, and that you very much wished you might know ‘the conditions of heredity and environment’ that had produced ‘so strange a phenomenon.’ There! I remember your words, though I haven’t the slightest notion what they mean. I went upstairs and wrote them down. Of course I couldn’t spell them except in my own way—and that would make you laugh I reckon if you could see it, which you never shall—but I haven’t a glimmering notion of what the words mean. Now I want to tell you about Dorothy.”
“Good! I am anxious to hear!”
“Oh, I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear. That would be gossip, and no Virginia woman ever gossips.”
That was true. The Virginians of that time, men and women alike, locked their lips and held their tongues in leash whenever the temptation came to them to discuss the personal affairs of their neighbors. They were bravely free and frank of speech when telling men to their faces what opinions they might hold concerning them; but they did that only when necessity, or honor, or the vindication of truth compelled. They never made the character or conduct or affairs of each other a subject of conversation. It was the very crux of honor to avoid that.
“Then tell me what you are minded to reveal, Aunt Polly,” responded Arthur. “I do not care to know anything else.”
“Well, Dorothy is in a peculiar position—not by her own fault. She must marry into a good family, and it has fallen to me to prepare her for her fate.”