—A. G. Greene.
"Zoe, come in out of the hot sun, child; do you hear? Sitting out there in the full glare, bless my soul, without even a hat on your head."
Miss Adeline Litchfield, the monitress of the Litchfield establishment, stands in the pretty front porch, overhung with fragrant blossoming honeysuckle and sweet climbing roses. She looks with wrathful eyes upon her niece, curled up on a chair on the veranda, her book on the top railing, with her elbows beside it, her head buried in her two hands. Zoe was lost to the objects around and the world in general. She was far off, taking a far deeper interest in the pleasures and trials of her friends in the book spread out before her, than in the everyday employments or household duties in which "auntie" wished her to excel.
"Zoe! do you hear me? Come in directly."
"Let me alone, Auntie; I am all right. I just have two chapters more, and then I'll come."
Miss Litchfield retires discomfitted, but not conquered. After a few moments she again appears, bearing a large white sun hat, daintily trimmed with muslin, and a small oval basket. Going over to the guilty party, she quietly shuts the book up and puts it under her arm.
"Zoe, put on your hat; I want you to go an errand for me, down to Mrs. Haley's. Tell her I was so well pleased with the rolls of fresh butter she sent, that I will take two more."
Zoe's eyes blazed; it was on the tip of her quick tongue to say, "I won't;" but an inward sense of politeness forbade her to do so; for though "Auntie" had a sharp tongue and a strong sense of right, which made her at times hard to get on with, still for all that her two nieces, to whom she had been mother, counsellor and friend since their own mother left them, were wrapped up in quick-tempered but kind meaning aunt Adeline.
People were not sure if Mrs. Litchfield was dead or not. Rumors had been afloat that she had left her husband. No one dared question either Mr. Litchfield nor his sister; every one knew it to be an understood fact that the family desired the public to consider her dead. "Auntie" had always been all-in-all to her brother and his children.