“I mean, it's curious because, as a matter of fact, his wife did die a little later, and he did marry again.”
“Told you so,” remarked my aunt.
In this way every case in the Stillwood annals was reviewed, and light thrown upon it by my aunt's insight into the hidden springs of human action. Fortunate that the actors remained mere Mr. X. and Lady Y., for into the most innocent seeming behaviour my aunt read ever dark criminal intent.
“I think you are a little too severe,” Mr. Gadley would now and then plead.
“We're all of us miserable sinners,” my aunt would cheerfully affirm; “only we don't all get the same chances.”
An elderly maiden lady, a Miss Z., residing in “a western town once famous as the resort of fashion, but which we will not name,” my aunt was convinced had burnt down a house containing a will, and forged another under which her children—should she ever marry and be blessed with such—would inherit among them on coming of age a fortune of seven hundred pounds.
The freshness of her views on this, his favourite topic, always fascinated Mr. Gadley.
“I have to thank you, ma'am,” he would remark on rising, “for a most delightful conversation. I may not be able to agree with your conclusions, but they afford food for reflection.”
To which my aunt would reply, “I hate talking to any one who agrees with me. It's like taking a walk to see one's own looking-glass. I'd rather talk to somebody who didn't, even if he were a fool,” which for her was gracious.
He was a stout little gentleman with a stomach that protruded about a foot in front of him, and of this he appeared to be quite unaware. Nor would it have mattered had it not been for his desire when talking to approach as close to his listener as possible. Gradually in the course of conversation, his stomach acting as a gentle battering ram, he would in this way drive you backwards round the room, sometimes, unless you were artful, pinning you hopelessly into a corner, when it would surprise him that in spite of all his efforts he never succeeded in getting any nearer to you. His first evening at our house he was talking to my aunt from the corner of his chair. As he grew more interested so he drew his chair nearer and nearer, till at length, having withdrawn inch by inch to avoid his encroachments, my aunt was sitting on the extreme edge of her own. His next move sent her on to the floor. She said nothing, which surprised me; but on the occasion of his next visit she was busy darning stockings, an unusual occupation for her. He approached nearer and nearer as before; but this time she sat her ground, and it was he who in course of time sprang back with an exclamation foreign to the subject under discussion.