For the first time in years Kathryn regarded her aunt now with interest.
“Aunt Anna”––Kathryn never indulged in graceful tact with her relations––“Aunt Anna, how old are you?”
Anna Morris coloured, flinched, but smiled coyly.
“Forty-two, dear, but it was only yesterday that my dressmaker said that I should not tell that. It is not necessary, you know.”
“I suppose not!” Kathryn was regarding the fatness of the woman who was calmly setting the disorderly room to rights. “Aunt Anna, why didn’t you marry?”
The dull, fat face was turned away. Anna Morris never lost sight of the fact that when Kathryn married she would face a stern situation unless Kathryn proved kinder than any one had any reason to expect her to be. So her remarks were guarded.
“Oh! my dear, my dear, what a question. Well, to be quite frank, I discovered at eighteen that some men could stir my senses”––Anna Morris tittered––“and some couldn’t. At twenty-two the only man who could stir me was horribly poor; the other stirring ones had been snapped up. You see, there was no one to help me with my affairs. Your father never did understand. The only thing he was keen about was making money enough to marry your mother. Then you were born and your mother died and––well, there was nothing for me to do but come here and help him out. One has plain duties. I always had sense enough”––Anna Morris moved about heavily––“to realize that senses do not stir when poverty pinches, and this house was comfortable; and duty can fill in chinks. I always contend”––the dull eyes now confronted Kathryn––“that there is a dangerous age for men and women. If they get through that alive and alone––well, there is a kind of calm that comes.”
“I suppose so.” Kathryn felt a sinking in the region of the heart. “Are you ever lonely?” she asked suddenly. “Ever feel that you let your own life slip when you helped Father and me?”
Anna Morris’s lips trembled as they always did when any one was kind to her; but she got control of herself at once––she could not afford the comfort of letting herself go!