“Upon my word! Aunt Crete, you look as if it were something to be glad about, instead of a downright calamity.”
“Glad; of course I’m glad, Luella. Wouldn’t you be glad to see your oldest sister’s child? Hannah was always very dear to me. I can see her now the way she looked when she went away, so tall and slim and pretty——”
“Not if she’d been dead for a century or so, and I’d never seen the child, and he was a gawky, embarrassing creature who would spoil the prospects of the people I was supposed to love,” retorted Luella. “Aunt Crete, don’t you care the least bit for my happiness? Do you want it all spoiled?”
“Why, of course not, dearie,” beamed Aunt Crete, “but I don’t see how it will spoil your happiness. I should think you’d want to see him yourself.”
“Aunt Crete! The idea! He’s nothing to me. You know he’s lived away out in the wild West all his life. He probably never had much schooling, and doesn’t know how to dress or behave in polite society. I heard he went away off up in the Klondike somewhere, and worked in a mine. You can imagine just what a wild, ignorant creature he will be. If Clarence Grandon should see him, he might imagine my family were all like that; and then where would I be?”
“Yes, Crete, I’m surprised at you. You’ve been so anxious all along for Luella to shine in society, and now you talk just as if you didn’t care in the least what happened,” put in Luella’s mother.
“But what can you do?” asked Aunt Crete. “You can’t tell him not to come—your own sister’s child!”
“O, how silly you are, Crete!” said her sister. “No, of course we can’t very well tell him not to come, as he hasn’t given us a chance; for this telegram is evidently sent on the way. It is dated ‘Chicago,’ and he hasn’t given us a trace of an address. He doesn’t live in Chicago. He’s very likely almost here, and may arrive any time to-morrow. Now you know we’ve simply got to go to the shore next week, for the rooms are all engaged at the hotel, and paid for; and we might as well hurry up and get off to-night or early in the morning, and escape him. Luella would die of mortification if she had to cousin that fellow and give up her trip to the shore. As you weren’t going anyway, you can receive him. It will keep him quietly at home, for he won’t expect an old woman to go out with him, and show him the sights; so nobody will notice him much, and there won’t be a lot of talk. If he looks very ridiculous, and that prying Mrs. Brown next door speaks of it, you might explain he’s the son of an old school friend who went out West to live years ago——”
“O Carrie!” exclaimed Aunt Crete, “that wouldn’t be true; and, besides, he can’t be so very bad as that. And even if he is, I shall love him—for he’s Hannah’s boy.”
“Love him all you want to,” sniffed her sister, “but for pity’s sake don’t let the neighbors know what relation he is.”