Great-Aunt Sarah reached Auburn the next day. No telegram had heralded the hour of her coming, and consequently there was no one at the station to meet her on arrival. At noon on Friday, while Barbara was convincing the Vegetable Man’s daughter that steak should be broiled instead of fried, a carriage rolled up to the door. Peanuts Barker, still in Banker Willowby’s top hat, deposited a trunk on the front walk, and a stout lady, with two methodical puffs of shiny black hair in under her bonnet, and three small boys dismounted.
At the sound of the wheels there was a general scattering of the clan. Gassy, whose hatred for Aunt Sarah was general, and for the boys specific, retired to the coal-cellar, David hurried to put his dear books out of reach of marauding hands, and Jack meanly abandoned the scene of action for an upstairs window. Barbara and the Kid were the only members of the family to greet the guests.
“How do you do, my dears?” said Aunt Sarah, majestically. “I was surprised to find no one at the station when I arrived. I am not accustomed to the care of my own baggage. Barbara, how sallow you are! Don’t set my trunk down there, sir; my fee to you includes payment for carrying it upstairs. Archie, let the dressing-case alone; I don’t want to have to speak to you about it again! I suppose I am to have the east room, as usual. I hope the morning light won’t wake me up at day-break.”
“The same old Great Sahara!” whispered Jack, appearing in the hall to shoulder the luggage. “Age cannot wither, or custom stale her infinite arrive-ity. If I should hear that voice in the heart of the Hartz Mountains, I should say, ’Tis she! ’Tis she!”
It was true that the three years that had passed since aunt and niece had met had done little to change Aunt Sarah. At the table that noon, Barbara, who had sacrificed her vegetarian theories to the comfort of her visitors, hospitably inquired about the result:—
“How is your steak, Aunt Sarah?”
Mrs. Bossall plied her knife vigorously for a moment, then replied to her niece’s question with a single word:—
“Tough!”
Barbara’s housekeeping, Jack’s idleness, Gassy’s disposition, David’s dreaminess, and the Kid’s table-manners were all criticised with impartiality. Even the Vegetable Man’s daughter was not spared.
“If that girl were working for me, she wouldn’t sit up with her young man until half-past ten o’clock,” she announced, on the second morning after her arrival.