It was Aunt Almira who took the deepest satisfaction in the motor-car, after all. Born under another star, the large and lymphatic lady would without doubt have been a society devotee. She loved dress and display, and sometimes Janice found it difficult to influence Aunt ’Mira to have frocks and hats proper to her age and station.
Until the monthly stipend for Janice’s board had come to the Day house, she had seldom handled cash during her married life; for Uncle Jason believed in treating “wimmen-folks” like a species of overworked pauper. Now Aunt ’Mira did not even have to use the board money for her personal expenses, and was secretly banking it for Janice, depending upon her hens and the butter she made for cash with which to clothe herself.
Aunt ’Mira dressed in her automobile “togs” was a vision to excite wonder. She had purchased coat, hat, veil and gloves all of fawn color, and when she climbed heavily into the tonneau, making the springs creak under her weight, Uncle Jason stood by and expressed his opinion in pointed, if uncultivated, speech.
“I swan to man, Almiry,” he said, “you look like a load of hay! Seems ter me if I was as big as you be, I’d put suthin’ on ter fool folks inter thinkin’ my shape was a leetle more genteel. I snum! if that’er contraption of Janice’s don’t scare all the hosses in Polktown into fits, you’ll do it, sure. Huh!”
His criticism did not disturb his wife’s poise. She was not to be ridiculed out of her triumph, but sat in the back of the car like a queen enthroned, and excited almost as much attention on High Street as a circus parade.
Janice did not mind a bit. She loved Aunt ’Mira with all her innocent faults. Her vanity over what she thought was the height of fashion in automobile apparel, merely amused Janice. She drove the car slowly up High Street, so that everybody would have a chance to get to their front windows and see Mrs. Jason Day go by. And by the flickering of the slats in the window blinds, the girl knew that many of the women-folk along the way came to peep at the car and its occupants.
“I declare for’t, Janice!” exclaimed her aunt, in vast satisfaction, “I wish High Street was as long as the makin’ of books—an’ the Scriptures say there ain’t no end to that. I know there’s a-many of these Polktown wimmen have looked down on us Days in times passed; Jase was drefful shiftless and I was a reg’lar drag myself. And it delights me—it does, indeed—to show ’em we can hold our heads up with the best. An’ I lay it to you, Janice, that our fortunes have changed,” and the good lady’s eyes became moist in her earnestness. “What you’ve done for Polktown——”
“Why, Auntie!” laughed Janice. “You’ll make me quite vain.”
“What you’ve done for Polktown,” went on her aunt, unruffled by the interruption, “casts a sort of reflected glory on us other Days. An’ we’ve got to live up to it. I’m sure, Janice, though you be only a girl, you ought to think more about dress than you do. I never see a young girl that seemed to care less about prinkin’ than you do.”
“I should hope not!” gasped Janice. “And I’ve got plenty of nice dresses, Aunt ’Mira.”