“I shall like him,” was my mental comment, as I turned from him towards the bundle of clothes which Uncle Joseph lifted from the sleigh and deposited upon the steps, and which we supposed to be our dreaded aunt.
“This is perfectly horrible,” were the first words which issued from under the folds of her veil; but to what she referred I never knew.
We all knew and loved Uncle Joseph, and for his sake my mother conquered whatever of prejudice she felt towards his wife, who returned her cordial welcome with the extreme end of her forefinger, saying, when asked to sit down, “I’ll go to my room immediately, if you please.”
“Speak to the children first,” suggested my uncle, and with a muttered, “It doesn’t matter,” the haughty lady bowed coldly to us, as one by one we were presented.
When it came my turn, her small, black eyes rested longer upon me, and the faintest derisive smile imaginable curled the corners of her mouth. I knew that either my cap or my face had provoked that smile, and with tears in my eyes I was turning away, when Herbert Langley caught me in his long arms, exclaiming, “And so, this is Rosa, the poetess, I mean to call you little ‘Crop-head,’ may I?”
He referred, I suppose, to a letter which I had once written in rhyme to my Uncle Joseph, but before, I could frame any reply, his mother said, scornfully, “Don’t be flattered, child—Herbert calls everything poetry that rhymes. He’ll learn to discriminate better as he grows older,” and with a stately sweep she left the room, saying, as she reached the rather steep and narrow stair-case, “Dear me—how funny—it’s like mounting a ladder.”
While she was making her toilet we had an opportunity of learning something of Herbert, who, whether he were so or not, seemed much pleased with everything around him. Occasionally, however, I doubted his sincerity, for when Aunt Betsey was presented to him, he appeared quite as much delighted with her as with anything else, drawing his chair closely to her side, and asking her numberless questions about the best modes of making cheese and raising chickens, while all the time there was a peculiarly quizzical expression in his eyes, which were dark and very handsome, saving that the lids were too red to suit my ideas of beauty. To Anna and her spit curls he took kindly, and ere his lady mother made her appearance a second time he had put his arm around her twice, telling her she should come to Boston sometime and go to school. A rustle of silk upon the stairs announced the descent of Aunt Charlotte, and with her nose slightly elevated, ready for any emergency, she entered the parlor, where she was introduced to Aunt Betsey, who, courtesying straight down, “hoped to see her well,” adding, that she “s’posed she’d come to the country to see how poor folks lived.”
Falling back into the rocking-chair which Anna brought for her, Aunt Charlotte made no particular reply, save an occasional attack upon her hartshorn. Aunt Betsey, however, nothing daunted, endeavored to engage her in conversation by asking if “she knew Liza Ann Willcott, a tailoress girl, that boarded with a Miss Johnson, who used to live in Union, but who now lived in Boston.”
Frowning majestically, Aunt Charlotte replied that she had not the honor of Miss Willcott’s acquaintance, whereupon Aunt Betsey advised her to make it by all means, assuring her that “Liza Ann was a first rate girl, and that Miss Johnson was the best kind of a neighbor, always willin’ to lend, or do a good turn”——
Here, with a haughty toss of her head, Aunt Charlotte turned away and began talking in a low tone to Herbert, he being the only one who, she seemed to think, was at all worth noticing. It is strange how much constraint one person can sometimes throw over a room full. On this occasion, had an ogress suddenly alighted in our midst, we could not have been more silent or less at ease than we were with that Boston lady, sitting there so starched and stiff, her fat hands folded one over the other, and the tips of her satin gaiters just visible from beneath the ample folds of her rich silk dress. Even Uncle Joseph, whose genial nature usually shed so much sunlight over our circle, was grave and reserved, rarely venturing a remark, or, if he did, glancing at his wife to see if she approved it. Uncle Jason, who painfully felt his own awkwardness, sat tipped back in his chair against the wall, with his feet on the rounds, while his fingers kept time to a tune, which he was evidently whistling to himself. Glad were we all when finally called to dinner, the savory smell of which had long been whetting our appetites.