“Yes; as my dear loving patient Aunt,” said Neil, smiling. “There, don’t take any more notice of it. Good-bye. Come, come, don’t look at me like that. It brings back one of your old scoldings when I was a boy.”
He kissed her and went out of the room.
“But I don’t like it,” said Aunt Anne, “and I am not one to be deceived. I disliked that woman from the hour she entered the house. I had my forebodings then, and they grow firmer every day. He took her part directly. Why, Isabel, my dear, I thought you were down the garden,” she cried, as her niece entered the room.
“I? No, Aunt. I just went to get a few flowers for papa, and I wanted to take them and arrange them in his room, but Nurse Elisia keeps watch there like a dragon, and would not let me go in.”
“Why, she would not even let me go in,” cried Aunt Anne with great emphasis on the first personal pronoun.
“Wouldn’t she, Aunt?”
“No, my dear, and I shall bless the day when that woman goes. She is not what she appears.”
“Isn’t she, Aunt?”
“No, my dear.”
“I’ve thought something of that kind,” said Isabel dreamily. “She seems so much of the lady, and as if she quite looked down upon me, as being superior to us.”