"You don't mean you haven't heard? My dear!" Madam Flynt's handsome hands were trembling with eagerness, her lips began to shape the words before she could find voice to utter them. "You don't mean you haven't heard?" she repeated. Madam Flynt was no gossip, but she loved to talk, and going out so little, she had fewer opportunities than the Gadderenes, as Dr. Ross used to call some of his neighbors. One's first visit was made to her, as I have said: but ten to one Cissy Sharpe or her mother had waylaid one on the way from the station, with "Oh, howdy do! quite a stranger! Have you heard"—and before getting free one had heard.
"Johanna Ross—Kitty's aunt, the Doctor's only sister; very likely you never heard of her, my dear, just visiting as you do"—(Oh, Madam Flynt! as if I were not Cyrus born and bred, and exiled through no fault of mine!)—"but—well, anyhow, she has come home after twenty years of absence; and what is more she has taken to her bed, and there she is!"
Madam Flynt drew herself up and nodded gravely: the green satin cap ribbons following suit.
"Is she seriously ill?" I asked, wondering.
"My dear! she says there is nothing whatever the matter with her except fatigue. I can understand that!" she nodded again. "Perfectly. One doesn't always care to discuss chronic or deep-seated troubles. Sometimes when people say 'rheumatism' to me, I want to throw the fire-irons at them. I don't mean you, my dear; perfectly natural and right for you to ask; I should have been hurt if you hadn't. Well! there Johanna is, as I said. I go over to see her once a week—walk over, with the step of youth, Cornelia Croly says, and there I find her in her bed, looking as permanent as the Pyramids."
At this moment Miss Croly came in softly with the milk-posset. Madam Flynt took it with an absent-minded, "Thanks, Cornelia!" drank it off, then paused with a look of discomfiture.
"I told you I wouldn't take it!" she said sharply.
"Your natural good sense"—murmured Miss Croly with a glance at the empty cup—"the Doctor recommended——"
"Hang the Doctor! and you, too!" exclaimed Madam Flynt. "You—you—you—go away, Cornelia Croly! go and"—Miss Croly was already at the door, aggressive meekness in every line of face and figure—"and bring me my smelling-salts, if you will have the goodness!"
The last words were spoken with austere dignity: but, the door once closed, Madam Flynt's sense of humor was too much for her. Her lips began to twitch, her eyes to twinkle even under the bent brows of anger. She struggled for a moment, then burst into a hearty fit of laughter.