“It may not have attracted much attention,” replied my mother, with a smile, “but one should not be agreeable merely to attract attention.”
“It wasn't only that,” returned my aunt, “it was that it gave no satisfaction to anybody. It didn't suit me. A disagreeable person is at their best when they are disagreeable.”
“I can hardly agree with you there,” answered my mother.
“I could do it again,” communed my aunt to herself. There was a suggestion of vindictiveness in her tones. “It's easy enough. Look at the sort of fools that are agreeable.”
“I'm sure you could be if you tried,” urged my mother.
“Let 'em have it,” continued my aunt, still to herself; “that's the way to teach 'em sense. Let 'em have it.”
And strange though it may seem, my aunt was right and my mother altogether wrong. My father was the first to notice the change.
“Nothing the matter with poor old Fan, is there?” he asked. It was one evening a day or two after my aunt had carried her threat into effect. “Nothing happened, has there?”
“No,” answered my mother, “nothing that I know of.”
“Her manner is so strange,” explained my father, “so—so weird.”