JULIA THE APOSTATE
By Josephine Daskam
Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons
“You don't think it's too young for me, girls?”
“Young for you—par exemple! I should say not,” her niece replied, perking the quivering aigrette still more obliquely upon her aunt's head. Carolyn used par exemple as a good cook uses onion—a hint of it in everything. There were those who said that she interpolated it in the Litany; but Carolyn, who was born Caroline and a Baptist, was too much impressed by the liturgy of what she called The Church to insert even an uncanonized comma.
“Now don't touch it, Aunt Julia, for it's deliciously chic, and if you had your way you'd flatten it down right straight in the middle—you know you would.”
Miss Trueman pursed her lips quizzically.
“I've always thought, Carrie—lyn,” she added hastily, as her niece scowled, “that they put things askew to make 'em different—for a change, as you might say. Now, if they're never in the middle, it's about as tiresome, isn't it?”
Elise, whose napkin-ring bore malignant witness to her loving aunt, Eliza Judd, laughed irrepressibly: she had more sense of humor than her sister. It was she who, though she had assisted in polishing the old copper kettle subsequently utilized as a holder for the tongs and shovel, had refused to consider the yet older wash-boiler in the light of a possible coal-scuttle, greatly to the relief of her aunt, who blushed persistently at any mention of the hearth.
She patted the older woman encouragingly.