“What! dinner so soon?” said Aunt Charlotte, consulting her gold watch, which pointed to half-past two. “I don’t believe I can force down a mouthful.”
But, spite of her belief, she did manage to make way with the contents of her well-filled plate, which was passed back a second time to be replenished. So eager were we all to serve her that we partially forgot Aunt Betsey, who, after waiting awhile for a potato, at last arose, and reaching half-way across the table, secured one for herself; saying, by way of apology, that “she believed in looking out for Number One, for if she didn’t nobody else would.”
So incensed was she with what she termed our neglect, that the moment dinner was over she insisted upon going home, saying, as she bade us good-bye, that “when she went again where she wasn’t wanted, she gussed she should know it;” and adding, while two big tears dropped from the end of her nose, that “she never s’posed she should be so misused by folks that she’d done so much for.”
The sight of her tears brought forth answering ones from me, for, with all her peculiarities, I loved Aunt Betsey, and I remembered that when sickness and death were among us, she had left her own home to stay with us, ministering as far as she was able to our comfort. Many a night had she watched with me, and though she invariably placed the lamp so that its rays glared full in my face, though she slept three-fourths of the time, snoring so loudly as to keep me awake, and though at the slightest change for the worse in my symptoms she always routed the whole household, telling them, “Rosa was dyin’ now, if she ever was,” thereby almost frightening me to death, I knew that she meant well, and in my heart I liked her far better than I did my Boston aunt, who, after bidding her sister-in-law good-bye, went back to the parlor, saying to her husband in a tone loud enough for us to hear, “What a vulgar creature! Did you notice her hands? Why, they are as coarse and black as a servant girl’s.”
“And she’s none the worse for that,” interposed grandma, warming up in the defence of her son’s wife. “She has now and then an odd streak, but on the whole she’s better than they’ll average.”
After this, Aunt Charlotte relapsed into silence, which she did not break until she overheard Herbert proposing to Anna a ride on the morrow. Then she roused up, and while her little black eyes snapped, she said, “I am going home to-morrow afternoon, and so are you. Consequently, there’ll be no time for a ride.”
In a twinkling, Herbert’s thumb and finger went up to his nose, a gesture which I did not then understand, but it struck me disagreeably, and had also the effect of silencing Aunt Charlotte, who made no further remark on the subject until they chanced to be alone, when I, who was in the hall, heard her say, “What can induce you to talk so much with that raw country girl? Your city friends would laugh well if they knew it.”
Consigning his “city friends” to the care of the old gentleman supposed to preside over the lower regions, Herbert walked off in quest of the “raw country girl,” by whose side he sat the remainder of the evening, talking to her so low that Lizzie whispered to me her private opinion that “they were courting.”
The next morning Aunt Charlotte did not appear at breakfast, it being so much earlier than her usual hour of rising that she felt wholly unequal to the task. Accordingly, though we did not wait, the table did until ten o’clock, when, pale and languid, she came down, seeming much disturbed to find that Herbert had coaxed Anna into going with him to call on Aunt Betsey, to whom he had taken quite a fancy, and who had asked him to visit her “if he didn’t feel too smart.”
Darting an angry glance at her husband, she said, “How could you suffer it?” asking at the same time if there was a hotel on the road. Being told that there was one at Union and another half-way between that and Meadow Brook, she seemed more disturbed than ever, eating little or no breakfast, and announcing her intention of staying over that day, or, at all events, until Herbert returned. Seating herself at the window, she watched and waited, while the hours crept on and the clock in grandma’s room struck four ere the head of “old Sorrel” was visible far down the road. Then with an eagerness wholly incomprehensible to me, she started up, straining her eyes anxiously in the direction of the fast approaching cutter. As it came nearer we all observed something rather singular in the position of Herbert, who seemed lying almost across Anna’s lap, while she was driving!