“I’d let it kill her then,” said Miss Affy’s life-long friend.
“No, you wouldn’t. Your sister is your sister, and she is all the mother I ever knew. Cephas and I jog on together like two old married folks. She says we will be glad when she is under the sod and we can have our own way.”
“She might let you have it now, and then you wouldn’t be glad,” urged Jean Draper’s mother.
“She cannot let us have it; her own will is too strong for her; when she gives up to us she will die.”
“Then I’d do it anyway,” counselled the other voice.
“We did talk of that, but we are afraid to—she is so old,” whispered Aunt Affy, feeling faint with the very thought of it.
“Well, it’s an old folks’ romance, and I didn’t know old folks had any,” said the woman who was married at sixteen.
But the girl on the lounge with her face in the pillow had listened; she had listened and learned something Aunt Affy would not have told her for the world.
How could she ever look into Aunt Affy’s face again? And, oh, how could she ever love Aunt Rody?
She groaned, and Aunt Affy came to her and asked if she felt worse. The neighbor went out on tiptoe; Aunt Rody came from the kitchen to stand threateningly near while Aunt Affy coaxed mouthful by mouthful the draining of the bitter bowl.