"Yet he forgot me. Perhaps it was pleasanter not to remember."
There was no reply to make. Natalie knew that her father had been so well content to forget his relatives that, until the unexpected meeting in Germany, her own knowledge of the Claghorns had been very vague.
"'Liph did write me when he married, even promised to come and see me, but he never came."
Miss Claghorn forgot the fact that in reply to her nephew's letter she had deplored his connection with Romanism and had urged instant attention to the duty of converting his wife. The philosopher may have justly enough felt that there could be but little sympathy between himself and one whose congratulations on his nuptials were in part a wail of regret, in part an admonitory sermon.
"You know, Aunt, he did intend to come."
"To see Mrs. Joe—well, no doubt he would have been glad to see me, too. I am sorry we never met after so many years."
Besides the tenderness displayed to Natalie alone, there were evidences of change in the mistress of the White House, apparent to all; and while these were properly ascribed to the new inmate, the fact that that influence could work such wonders excited surprise. The neighbors were astonished to behold the novel sight of perennially open parlor windows, and thought with misgiving upon the effect of sunshine on Miss Claghorn's furniture. At times strange sounds issued from the hitherto silent dwelling, operatic melodies, or snatches of chansons, trilled forth in a foreign tongue. "The tunes actually get into my legs," observed Tabitha to a neighbor. "The sobber de mong pare'd make an elder dance," an assertion which astonished the neighbor less than Miss Cone's familiarity with the French language. But comment was actually stricken dumb when both Miss Claghorn and Tabitha appeared in public with sprigs of color in their headgear and visible here and there upon their raiment.
"I believe you'd bewitch Old Nick himself," observed Tabitha.
"I have," replied Natalie. "He's promised me a shrub."
"I don't mean Nick that brings the garden sass," and the spinster groaned at the benighted condition of one so ignorant as to fail to recognize a familiar appellation of the enemy of souls. "You've worked your grand-aunt out of a horse."