One day the second week of July she called Emily up from Chicago by 'phone. Could she bring Miss Curtis and a little niece down for a week or two? Could she, indeed! When Emily told Bob about that 'phone message, he looked at her. She thought it pitiful that he should say with exaggerated eagerness:
"Good! That's fine, Emily."
Emily thought at first sight that Saturday morning, that the child was quite as commonplace as her aunt. She was inclined to be fat; she was shy; she had a featureless little soft face, and blue eyes, and brown bobbed hair and a husky voice; but by noon Emily loved her. Her disposition evoked admiration. She had a way of going suddenly to her aunt and kissing her heartily, that was very spontaneous and endearing. Without warning, as they all sat at the dinner table, she rose from her place and went and threw her fat arms about Miss Curtis's neck and gave her a resounding kiss, as though it was the only thing to do, and then quietly went back to her chair. Bob was amused by her lack of self-consciousness; and, during dessert, he acquired quite suddenly an admiration that was all but awe for Miss Curtis.
She had happened to say that she had never, as a matter of fact, been so well at the end of a school year.
"But of course I was never so well taken care of in my life." She was speaking towards Emily. "Never in my life, before, Mrs. Kenworthy, have I happened to—be living—so that anybody brought my breakfast to me in bed. That's never happened to me before." It wasn't a complaint; it was merely a fact, stated impersonally.
Emily knew perfectly what she meant, but she had to ask the question to enlighten Bob.
"Your colored girl comes early, then, now?" she asked.
"Not the colored girl; this little white girl," she said, indicating Martha affectionately. "This girl simply bosses me about I don't dare to get up and get my breakfast, in my own house."
Martha said: "Oh, that's nothing. Mother always did that for me."
Emily saw that Bob was on the point of crying, "My God!" She blessed him for refraining.