"Oh, come now!" the girl said, stopping with arrested knife. "That wasn't what made her let out a yell like that!"
Mrs. Sheridan, kneeling at the oven of the gas stove, laughed uneasily.
"Oh, you could hear that, could you?"
"Hear it! They heard it in Yonkers."
"Well," Mrs. Sheridan said, "she has always been high-strung, that one. I remember years ago she'd be going into crying and raving fits. She's got very deep affections, Mrs. Melrose, and when she gets thinking of Theodore, and of Alice's accident, and this and that, she'll go right off the handle. She had been crying, poor soul, and suddenly she began this moaning and rocking. I told her I'd call someone if she didn't stop, for she'd go from bad to worse, with me."
"But why with you, Aunt Kate? Do you know her so well?"
"Do I know them?" Mrs. Sheridan dug an opener into a can of corn with a vigorous hand. "I know them all!"
"But how was that?" Norma persisted, now dropping her peeled potatoes into dancing hot water.
"I've told you five thousand times, but you and Rose would likely have one of your giggling fits on, and not a word would you remember!" her aunt said. "I've told you that years ago, when your Uncle Tom died, and I was left with two babies, and not much money, a friend of mine, a milliner she was, told me that she knew a lady that wanted someone to help manage her affairs—household affairs. Well, I'd often helped your Uncle Tom with his books, and my mother was with me, to look out for the children——"
"Where was I, Aunt Kate?"