"Well, I don't envy you your trouble," said my aunt. "I am sure you are welcome. Will he stay to the wedding, think you?"
"I dare say he will, if he is asked," replied my another. "He was always a well-natured gentleman."
"Now if you would only let Vevette be married at the same time, what a fine wedding we should have! She is young, to be sure, but—" and here she stopped, arrested by something in my mother's face.
"Have you already forgotten, sister Corbet, how you said before your whole family that it was an ill day when my daughter darkened your doors—how you declared that she would ruin your son as she had ruined your daughter?" asked my mother.
"But I was angry then," answered my aunt. "I did not mean half I said. Sure you won't break off with my poor son on that account. Why, he loves Vevette as the apple of his eye."
"He took a strange way to show it, I must needs say," returned my mother. "No, Amy, for the present any engagement between them is at an end. Should he wish to renew his suit when he returns, he can do so, but meantime my daughter is quite at liberty."
My aunt remonstrated, and even cried, but my mother was firm, and when my aunt appealed to me, I seconded her.
"Well, well, I suppose there is no use in saying more," said my aunt, wiping her eyes. "Let us hope all will yet turn out well. I only wish my Betty were half as docile as Vevette, though I can't think it was right; however, we will let bygones be bygones."
And she began asking my mother's advice about certain details of the wedding—advice which she gave very readily, for she had no mind to keep up a quarrel.
"And you won't tell my lord of all poor Betty's misbehavior, will you?" said my aunt as she rose to go. "It would be such a disadvantage to her."