“Yes, my dear, I do, for it has troubled me a good deal to see you so badgered by that very uncomfortable old lady. Independence is a very nice thing, and poverty isn’t half as bad as this sort of slavery. But you are not going to be poor, nor worry about anything. We’ll just be married and take mother and Toady home and be as jolly as grigs, and never think of Mrs. K. again,—unless she loses her fortune, or gets sick, or comes to grief in any way. We’d lend her a hand then, wouldn’t we, Polly?” and Van’s mild face was pleasant to behold as he made the kindly proposition.
“Well, we’d think of it,” said Polly, trying not to relent, but feeling that she was going very fast.
“Let’s do it!” cried Toady, fired with the thought of privy conspiracy and rebellion. “Mother would be so comfortable with Polly, and I’d help Van in the store, when I’ve learned that confounded multiplication table,” he added with a groan; “and if Aunt Kipp comes a visiting, we’ll just say ‘Not at home,’ and let her trot off again.”
“It sounds very nice, but aunt will be dreadfully offended and I don’t wish to be ungrateful,” said Mrs. Snow, brightening visibly.
“There’s no ingratitude about it,” cried Van. “She might have done everything to make you love, and respect, and admire her, and been a happy, useful, motherly, old soul; but she didn’t choose to, and now she must take the consequences. No one cares for her, because she cares for nobody; her money’s the plague of her life, and not a single heart will ache when she dies.”
“Poor Aunt Kipp!” said Polly, softly.
Mrs. Snow echoed the words, and for a moment all thought pitifully of the woman whose life had given so little happiness, whose age had won so little reverence, and whose death would cause so little regret. Even Toady had a kind thought for her, as he broke the silence, saying soberly,—
“You’d better put tails on my jackets, mother; then the next time we get run away with, Aunt Kipp will have something to hold on by.”
It was impossible to help laughing at the recollection of the old lady clutching at the boy till he had hardly a button left, and at the paternal air with which he now proposed a much-desired change of costume, as if intent on Aunt Kipp’s future accommodation.
Under cover of the laugh, the old lady stole back to bed, wide awake, and with subjects enough to meditate upon now. The shaking up had certainly done her good, for somehow the few virtues she possessed came to the surface, and the mental shower-bath just received had produced a salutary change. Polly wouldn’t have doubted her aunt’s possession of a heart, if she could have known the pain and loneliness that made it ache, as the old woman crept away; and Toady wouldn’t have laughed if he had seen the tears on the face, between the big frills, as Aunt Kipp laid it on the pillow, muttering, drearily,—