"I've been telling Miss Theodora," she cried, with the familiarity of an old servant, "I've been telling Miss Theodora that I believe Mast' Ernest's in love. He don't spend much time with us now, and I reckon 'tain't study that takes him out every evening. I shouldn't wonder if you knows more about it than we do,"—and Diantha rolled her large eyes significantly at Kate.
But Kate was silent, and Miss Theodora was silent, and Diantha, with a toss of the head and arms akimbo, passed on to her little attic room. Nor when she was gone did the two ladies speak to each other of the thing which lay so near their hearts.
Now, Miss Theodora, until driven thereto by Mrs. Digby, had never contemplated the possibility of Ernest's taking a tender interest in any one not approved by her. She had never resented Sarah Fetchum's addressing him by his first name, even after he had entered college and Sarah herself was almost through the Normal School. She could invite Sarah and her intimate friend, Estelle Tibbits, to take tea with her without any fear that Ernest would fall in love with either of them.
Unaware, apparently, of his aunt's solicitude, Ernest continued to mix a little play with the hard work of his last year of study. Miss Theodora, at least, had no reason to complain of neglect from him. He went with her to the Old West Church on Sunday morning as willingly as ever he had gone in the days of his childhood. Indeed, as a little boy she had often had to urge him unduly to go with her, and sometimes he would try to beg off with the well-worn plea that he "hated sermons." Later, as they sat in the high-backed pew which they shared with the Somersets, Miss Theodora would notice the boy's fair head moving restlessly from side to side.
As years passed on Ernest grew as fond as his aunt of the old church, with its plain white ceiling and gallery, supported by simple columns, and its tablets in honor of men of a bygone age. If sometimes on Sunday afternoons he went to Trinity Church, contented to stand for an hour in the crowded aisle to hear the uplifting words of the great preacher, he never made this later service an excuse for neglecting his aunt's church. In this, as in almost all other matters in which she had marked preferences, Ernest gave Miss Theodora little ground for complaint.
Toward the end of his Technology course Ernest made all his other interests bend to study. No longer had he any evening engagements to worry his aunt. He read late into the night. His thesis occupied most of his day, for it involved an immense amount of practical work in a factory out of town. As Miss Theodora observed his zeal, as she heard reports of his good standing in his class, she could but contrast this state of affairs with his unsatisfactory year at Harvard.
