"Why not?" she would demand, deeply hurt.
"Well, you know, you are not a relation," Johnny would say; and his mother would rush up to her room and pace up and down, up and down, and cry until she could hardly see.
"She's robbed us of our own child!" she used to tell her husband.
As for Johnny, he told Miss Lydia once that Mrs. Robertson was kind, and all that, but she was a nuisance.
"Oh, Johnny, I wouldn't say that, dear. She's been nice to you."
"What makes her?" said Johnny, curiously. "Why is she always gushing round?"
"Well, she likes you, Johnny."
Johnny grinned. "I don't see why. I'm afraid I'm not awfully polite to her. She was telling me she'd give me anything on earth I wanted; made me feel like a fool!" said Johnny, "and I said, 'Aunty gives me everything I want, thank you'; and she said, 'She doesn't love you as much as I do.' And I said (all this love talk makes me kind of sick!) I said, 'Oh yes, she does; she loved me when I was a squealing baby! You didn't know me then.'"
"What did she say?" Miss Lydia asked, breathlessly.
"Oh, she sort of cried," said Johnny, with a bored look.