"She wasn't your mother when he began!" said the old lady, tartly. "He couldn't foresee that she was going to be, could he? If he had he might have asked your permission. She preferred George Jaquith, naturally. Women mostly prefer a handsome scamp. Not that Homer ever looked like anything but a sheep. Then there was Lily Bent—"
She broke off suddenly. "You're tying that all crooked, Will Jaquith. I'll come and do it myself if you can't do better than that."
"I'll have it right in a moment, Mrs. Tree. You were saying—something about Lily Bent?"
"There are half a dozen lilies bent almost double!" Mrs. Tree declared, peevishly. "Careless! I paid five dollars for that Golden Lily, young man, and you handle it as if it were a yellow turnip."
"Mrs. Tree!"
"Well, what is it? It's time for me to have my nap, I expect."
"Mrs. Tree,"—the young man's voice was earnest and pleading,—"I brought you a letter from Lily Bent this morning. I have been waiting—I want to hear something about her. I know she has been an angel of tenderness and goodness to my mother ever since—why does she stay away so long?"
"Because she's having a good time, I suppose," said Mrs. Tree, dryly. "She's been tied close enough these last three years, what with her grandmother and—one thing and another. The old woman's dead now, and small loss. Everybody's dead, I believe, except me and a parcel of silly children. I forget what you said became of that—of your wife after she left you."
"She died," said Jaquith, abstractedly. "Didn't I tell you? They went South, and she took yellow fever. It was only a month after—"
"No, you did not!" cried Mrs. Tree, sitting bolt upright. "You never told me a word, Willy Jaquith. What Providence was thinking of when it made this generation, passes me to conceive. If I couldn't make a better one out of fish-glue and calico, I'd give up. Bah! I've no patience with you."