"Well, Mary," she now began more mildly, "you know who it was that asked if he were his brother's keeper. I think it is our duty to exert ourselves for our neighbors, especially for our misguided kindred, and never to shrink from the utterance of a truth, however unwelcome. But you hold yourself entirely aloof from the affairs of others, and I suppose we shall never see the question alike. I want to tell you about Elvira—she is such a trial! And in this case you must advise me."
"Very well," said Mrs. Grey, with a sigh, seeing that Rob's tears of nervous wrath were falling, as she pretended to busy herself with the lining under the chair-seat, and resigning herself to listen for the unnumbered time to a recital of the wrong-doings of faithful Elvira, Mrs. Winslow's long-suffering "help," in the old-fashioned sense. It would all end as it always did; Elvira only failed in the small ways incident to humanity, and Aunt Azraella was wholly dependent upon her.
For a long time Mrs. Winslow recounted her woes, while Mrs. Grey and Wythie and Rob pulled and tacked. How Elvira had insisted on placing the glasses on the second shelf of the cupboard when Mrs. Winslow had always kept them on the third; how she had resolutely clung to a cheesecloth duster where her mistress preferred silk, and a cloth-covered broom for cornices, where Mrs. Winslow, and her mother before her, had used a feather-duster, etc., etc., through the whole long list of pettiness which meant only that the August day was sultry and Aunt Azraella out of sorts.
At last she paused, and Mrs. Grey saw that she had talked herself into a better frame of mind, her troubles remedied in their recital. "I wonder what would become of poor Elvira if Mrs. Winslow hadn't the little grey house as a safety-valve?" thought Mrs. Grey, but what she said aloud was what she always said under these circumstances: "After all, Elvira is a good, devoted creature, Azraella."
"Yes; I suppose I can't do better in Fayre than to keep her," said Aunt Azraella, responding in the set form to this liturgical remark. "I must go back, or she will have a chicken broiled for my supper. I told her I didn't want it, but she always does something of that sort when I have been annoyed. Send Prue up for some blackberries to-morrow, Mary. I have enough to let you have some for jam—possibly for cordial, too."
"Thank you; good-by, Azraella," said Mrs. Grey, and Rob arose to say good-by a trifle grimly, as Wythie escorted their relative to the door.
"Oh, dear," said Wythie, coming back and sitting flat on the floor beside the chair, now nearly done, in an attitude eloquent of exhaustion, if not despair. "I really think, Mardy, if we could emigrate, we ought to; it's enough to turn a saint into a tiger to have such visits so often."
"They used to turn saints into tigers in the Colosseum very frequently in the early Christian era," said Rob, whose spirits always rose a few points when Wythie's went down.