To which epistle, Dolly, in an ecstasy of indignation, replied:—
"My dear Aunt,—(from which commencement Miss Gerace anticipated stormy weather to follow; 'my' as a prefix to 'dear,' having always with Dolly been a declaration of hostility)—Of course I cannot tell in what spirit your letter was written, but I should say in a very bad one. At all events, I cannot go to Dassell now, and I regret asking you to have me. I will not visit any one who gives me a grudging welcome.
"I am not a fashionable lady. I am not a delicate woman. If being 'perfect' includes the power of saying disagreeable things to unoffending people, I am very thankful to admit I am, spite of your judicious training, an imperfect character. I suppose you have been waiting your opportunity to say something unpleasant to me, because Mrs. Edward Gerace spent a week with us in the Summer. I do not like her or her husband; but when they offered to visit us, we could not very well say there were plenty of Hotels within their means in London.
"And when they did come, I admit we tried to make them comfortable, which, no doubt assumes in your eyes the proportions of a sin. I daresay Edward Gerace's father did not treat my father well; but Edward is not responsible for that. For my part, I think in family feuds there ought to be a statute of limitations, as I believe there is for debt; nothing more fatiguing can be imagined, than to go on acting the Montague and Capulet business through all the days of one's life. If you had written to propose visiting me, I should have returned a very different answer; but I suppose people cannot help their dispositions. More is the pity!
"Your affectionate Niece,
"Dollabella Mortomley."
Which signature was adding insult to injury. 'Dollabella' had always been an offence in the nostrils of Miss Gerace. 'Dolly' was absurd; still, between the name and the owner, there was a certain fitness and unity.
With 'Dollabella' there was none. The "Minerva Press" twang about it had ever seemed intolerable to the practical spinster, nor did the fact of Mrs. Mortomley having been left the best part of her Godmother's money, tend to reconcile Miss Gerace to the polysyllabic appellation, all of which Mrs. Mortomley knew, and for that very reason she signed it in full.
"There," she thought to herself as she directed, sealed, and stamped the letter. "I hope Miss Gerace will like that."
For after the manner of her sex, she was petulant and little in unimportant matters.
It is the most purely womanly women who are given to similar outbursts.
Mrs. Werner could never so far have forgotten her own dignity as to indite such an epistle; but then, on the other hand, neither could she have repented for having done so, as Dolly did.
Barely was the letter posted before that repentance began. First, Mrs. Mortomley, her anger not yet assuaged, mentally pictured her aunt's horror and astonishment when she read. She saw the postman come up to the door. She saw the prim servant receive the letter. She saw her carry it into the breakfast-parlour. She saw Miss Gerace put on her spectacles. And at that point Dolly's anger began to ebb, and her regret to flow; after all, her aunt's innings out of life had been few and her own many; and she had her opinions just as Dolly had hers; and she had taken her nephew's child home when he died, and shared her small income with her, and done her duty faithfully, if not always pleasantly, and by way of return, Mrs. Mortomley had penned that letter, which by this time she herself styled nasty and detestable.