"No coffee! What new freak is that?" and Aunt Eunice gazed at him in astonishment as he declined the cup she had prepared with so much care, dropping in the whitest lumps of sugar, and stirring in the thickest cream.
It cost Hugh a terrible struggle to refuse that cup of coffee, but if he would retrench, he must begin at once, and determining to meet it unflinchingly he replied that "he had concluded to drink water for a while, and see what that would do; much was said nowadays about coffee being injurious, and he presumed it was."
"There's something on your mind," she said, observing his abstraction. "Have you had another dunning letter, or what?"
Aunt Eunice had made a commencement, and in his usual impulsive way Hugh began by asking if "she ever knew him tell a lie?"
No, Aunt Eunice never did. Nobody ever did, bad as some folks thought him.
"Do they think me very bad?" and Hugh spoke so mournfully that Aunt Eunice tried to apologize.
"She didn't mean anything, only folks sometimes said he was cross and rough, and—and—"
"Stingy," he suggested, supplying the word she hated to say.
Yes, that was what Ellen Tiffton said, because he refused to go to the Ladies' Fair, where he was sure to have his pockets picked. But, law, she wasn't worth minding, if she was Colonel Tiffton's girl, and going to have a big party one week from the next Monday. Had Hugh heard of it?
Hugh believed Ad said something about it yesterday, but he paid no attention, for, of course, he should not go even if he were invited, as he had nothing fit to wear.