"Did he elderly marry?" Kitty roused herself with a little effort. If it were true, what did anything else matter? But that was no reason why she should be an unsociable curmudgeon.
"Tell me about him, Aunt Jo! dear Father never had time to tell me family stories, and blessed Mother didn't know them, I suppose. Let's have a good tell now!"
She looked up brightly. Miss Johanna returned the smile, not quite with her usual crisp composure. Her fine eyebrows lifted and knitted in a curious little way they had when she was disturbed; her laugh rang not wholly clear.
"I certainly cannot leave you in ignorance about Grandpa Westcott's third marriage!" she said. "I wonder at John; but he never cared about Family. Little White Lily didn't know, of course. Her grandfather was an archangel and her grandmother a seraph; good gracious! Suppose Egeria should hear me! Well, my dear, you shall have your 'tell'; I have brought it upon myself."
Miss Johanna paused to pick up a brand with the tongs and lay it carefully on top of the back-log. Kitty, turning the heel of her stocking, prepared for a pleasant season. She loved "tells," and Aunt Johanna was the ideal story-teller.
"Grandpa Westcott," the lady began, "my great, your great-great, was one of the best men that ever lived. I remember him well; tall, dignified, handsome: the only person I ever saw in a queue. He had had two wives, both patterns in every way. The first—she was a Siddall of Trimount, and a Beauty—the Stuart portrait—had no children and died young. The second was my grandmother, Katharine Turner; you are named for her, of course, and you look like her. She was not altogether plain, either," said Miss Johanna dryly, with a glance at the lovely face that smiled down from the wall in an exquisite pastel. "She had four children and lived to see them all grown up and settled in life, and to be the delight of her grandchildren's hearts. Then, when she was sixty and Grandpa seventy, she died quite suddenly, and Grandpa went all to pieces. Naturally! he was a very affectionate man, and for fifty years he had been told every day what to eat, drink and avoid, what shirt to put on, and where his socks were. More than that, he had been listened to, which is the most necessary thing for a man. He mourned and he moaned, he moaned and he mourned, till at last old Delia, who had been with him thirty of the fifty years, sent to the City for Uncle Doctor. I can just remember old Delia. She had large white teeth, and used to let me scribble on them with a pencil: horrid child! She sang old Irish songs as no one else ever did: I wish you could have heard her sing, 'Irish Molly O!'"
Miss Johanna broke off to sing, in a high, clear little voice:
"'She's galliant, she's beautiful,
She's the fairest one I know;
She's the primrose of Ireland,
All for my guinea, oh!
And the only one entices me
Is Irish Molly O,
Molly O!'
"Well! So Delia sent for Uncle Doctor, and he came. 'Mr. Doctor,' she said, 'your Da is looking for his dead clo'es. If you don't find a woman for him to marry, I'll have to marry him myself, and fine I'd look cocking in the parlor, d'ye see?"
"'Bless my soul!' says Uncle Doctor, 'I see. I'll attend to it, Delia.'