Patty laughed with hateful sarcasm, answering:
“No one will ever marry you, Cousin Tabby.”
“While there’s life there’s hope! I hain’t but fifty-three years old yit, and folks has married older’n that. You needn’t laff so scornful, Pat; I hate that sniggerin’ way you have! Is it any wonder I want to marry an’ git settled in a home of my own when gran’ther only left me a pitiful five hundred dollars, that’s spent long ago, an’ me a-hangin’ onto you an’ Lyd for a livin’? I kin see already, with half an eye, that you want to git red a’ me, an’ air ’shamed o’ me, the woman that raised you and chappyroned you all your life,” declared Miss Tabby grumblingly.
“For Heaven’s sake, quit lecturing me! It’s hard to have to support you, and be laughed at for having such a countrified relation, without taking your jaw, I can tell you. That’s more than I will bear!” Patty retorted coarsely, in a passion.
Miss Ruttencutter sniffed and hid her long red nose in her embroidered handkerchief without daring to reply, lest Patty turn her adrift without ceremony, as she had helped to turn Eva adrift on the cold, hard world.
This was not the first quarrel they had had, and the spinster began to read with startled eyes the handwriting on the wall.
Patty did not need her any longer, was tired of her, ashamed of her, and never took her out with her any more since that scornful Mrs. Putnam had become her chaperone. She had even hinted that Cousin Tabby had better go to Charleston and make Lydia a visit now. The legislature was in session now, and she could see all “the big men.”
But Cousin Tabby had rebelled, declaring:
“I seen the guv’nor an’ the other big men two years ago, an’ they wan’t no great shakes, none o’ them, sech as I expected. Why, some o’ them men in the legislatour looked as jakey as any other mountain hoosier I ever seen! There was ole Uncle Silas Higgins, they sent him to the legislatour from our county, an’ he never did know beans; an’ there was ‘Pop’ Longanacre, how did he ever git there, I wonder? Not by brains, I reckon; only some hocus-pocus polyticks! No, I seen enough o’ them polytickers to last me all my life. Not a bit different from other folkses, they wa’n’t! New York suits me better’n any place else. If I could only git inter sassiety an’ git acquainted with some o’ the pritty men I see at the opery, I’d ask no more.”
So she knew better than to aggravate Patty now, when she saw her own fate hanging so clearly in the balance.