“Aunt Jule!” they gasped together. “Are you—is it—”
“That's it exactly,” said Cousin Lorando Bean. “She is. And I hope you'll congratulate her, girls, though nobody knows better than I what a good housekeeper you've lost! I'll tell you the facts of the matter, and you can judge for yourself. If ever two people were made for each other, those two are your Aunt Jule and me. We love the country, and we love this farm, and what's very important, we love the same way of living.”
“That's quite true, Carrie—lyn,” Aunt Julia interposed, the tears in her eyes, but a new decision in her voice.
“I like my tea at night, and so does your Cousin Lorando. And I should have wanted gravy on my potato if I lived to be a hundred. And, Carrie, I could not live without a cellar!
“And if you knew how nervous I got when that old dumb-waiter in the kitchen used to whistle for the things to be put on it! I used to hate it so—sometimes I'd wake up in the night and think I heard it! Once I lost my temper at it, and I answered it back: 'I haven't anything to go down, and I wouldn't give it to you if I had!'”
“Why, Aunt Jule!” they cried.
“And I tell you, Carrie, when you have cleaned house regularly, spring and fall, for forty years, ever since you were born, it makes an awful break to give it up! And I do love a good crayon portrait.”
They looked at each other in silence.
“And when you have a set of furniture, it makes me nervous not to have it set together,” Aunt Julia went on determinedly.
“And I will not have a woman smoking in my house!