“You have been very kind to him,” said Catherine. “He has written me that, often. I shall never forget that, Aunt Lavinia.”
“I have done what I could; it has been very little. To let him come and talk to me, and give him his cup of tea—that was all. Your Aunt Almond thought it was too much, and used to scold me terribly; but she promised me, at least, not to betray me.”
“To betray you?”
“Not to tell your father. He used to sit in your father’s study!” said Mrs. Penniman, with a little laugh.
Catherine was silent a moment. This idea was disagreeable to her, and she was reminded again, with pain, of her aunt’s secretive habits. Morris, the reader may be informed, had had the tact not to tell her that he sat in her father’s study. He had known her but for a few months, and her aunt had known her for fifteen years; and yet he would not have made the mistake of thinking that Catherine would see the joke of the thing. “I am sorry you made him go into father’s room,” she said, after a while.
“I didn’t make him go; he went himself. He liked to look at the books, and all those things in the glass cases. He knows all about them; he knows all about everything.”
Catherine was silent again; then, “I wish he had found some employment,” she said.
“He has found some employment! It’s beautiful news, and he told me to tell you as soon as you arrived. He has gone into partnership with a commission merchant. It was all settled, quite suddenly, a week ago.”
This seemed to Catherine indeed beautiful news; it had a fine prosperous air. “Oh, I’m so glad!” she said; and now, for a moment, she was disposed to throw herself on Aunt Lavinia’s neck.
“It’s much better than being under some one; and he has never been used to that,” Mrs. Penniman went on. “He is just as good as his partner—they are perfectly equal! You see how right he was to wait. I should like to know what your father can say now! They have got an office in Duane Street, and little printed cards; he brought me one to show me. I have got it in my room, and you shall see it to-morrow. That’s what he said to me the last time he was here—‘You see how right I was to wait!’ He has got other people under him, instead of being a subordinate. He could never be a subordinate; I have often told him I could never think of him in that way.”