“We must think it over,” would say my mother; “there is no hurry; for some reasons I shall be sorry to leave Poplar.”
“For what reasons, mother?”
“Oh, well, no particular reason, Paul. Only we have lived there so long, you know. It will be a wrench leaving the old house.”
To the making of man go all things, even to the instincts of the clinging vine. We fling our tendrils round what is the nearest castle-keep or pig-stye wall, rain and sunshine fastening them but firmer. Dying Sir Walter Scott—do you remember?—hastening home from Italy, fearful lest he might not be in time to breathe again the damp mists of the barren hills. An ancient dame I knew, they had carried her from her attic in slumland that she might be fanned by the sea breezes, and the poor old soul lay pining for what she called her “home.” Wife, mother, widow, she had lived there till the alley's reek smelt good to her nostrils, till its riot was the voices of her people. Who shall understand us save He who fashioned us?
So the old house held us to its dismal bosom; and not until within its homely but unlovely arms, first my aunt, and later on my mother had died, and I had said good-bye to Amy, crying in the midst of littered emptiness, did I leave it.
My aunt died as she had lived, grumbling.
“You will be glad to get rid of me, all of you!” she said, dropping for the first and last time I can recollect into the retort direct; “and I can't say I shall be very sorry to go myself. It hasn't been my idea of life.”
Poor old lady! That was only a couple of weeks before the end. I do not suppose she guessed it was so certain or perhaps she might have been more sentimental.
“Don't be foolish,” said my mother, “you're not going to die!”
“What's the use of talking like an idiot,” retorted my aunt, “I've got to do it some time. Why not now, when everything's all ready for it. It isn't as if I was enjoying myself.”