“That’s just like you, Aunt Crete,” said Luella in a hurt tone. “You’ve known me and pretended to love me all your life. I’m almost like your own child, and yet you take up with this unknown nephew, and say you’ll love him in spite of all the trouble he’s making me.”
Aunt Crete doubled the V in her forehead, and wiped away the beads of perspiration. Somehow it always seemed that she was in the wrong. Would she be understood in heaven? she wondered.
Luella and her mother went on planning. They told off what Aunt Crete was to do after they left.
“There’s the raspberries and blackberries not done up yet, Crete, but I guess you can manage alone. You always do the biggest part of the canning, anyway. I’m awfully sorry about your sewing, Crete. I meant to fit your two thin dresses before we went away, but the dressmaker made Luella’s things so much more elaborate than I expected that we really haven’t had a minute’s time, what with all the lace insertion she left for us to sew on. Perhaps you better run down to Miss Mason, and see if she has time to fit them, if you think you can’t wait till we get back. You’ll hardly be going out much while we’re gone, you know.”
“O, I’ll be all right,” said Aunt Crete happily. “I guess I can fix up my gray lawn for while Donald’s here.”
“Donald! Nonsense! It won’t matter what you wear while he’s here. He’ll never know a calico from a silk. Now look here, Crete, you’ve got to be awfully careful, or you’ll let out when we went off. There’s no use in his finding out we didn’t want to see him. You wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings, you know. Your own sister’s child!”
“No, of course not,” agreed Aunt Crete, though there was a troubled look in her eyes. She never liked prevarication; and, when she was left with some polite fabrication to excuse her relatives out of something they wanted to shirk, she nearly always got it twisted so that it was either an out-and-out lie, which horrified her, or else let the whole thing “out of the bag,” as Luella said.
But there was little time for discussion; for Luella and her mother had a great deal of packing to do, and Aunt Crete had the dinner to get and the house to set in order, surreptitiously, for the expected guest.