"Somewhat disconcerted by the sharpness and suddenness of this interruption, I pause, and take some moments to recover myself.
"'If you please, ma'am, when am I to see my aunt?'
"'My aunt, if you please, ma'am?'
"'Mercy alive! and pray who do you suppose I am?'
"'You, ma'am,' I falter, with a vague uneasiness impossible to describe; 'are you not the housekeeper?'
"To say that she glares vacantly at me from behind her spectacles, loses her very power of speech, and grows all at once quite stiff and rigid in her chair, is to convey but a faint picture of the amazement with which she receives this observation.
"'I,' she gasps at length, 'I! Gracious me, child, I am your aunt.' I feel my countenance become an utter blank. I am conscious of turning red and white, hot and cold, all in one moment. My ears tingle; my heart sinks within me; I can neither speak nor think. A dreadful silence follows, and in the midst of this silence my aunt, without any kind of warning, bursts into a grim laugh, and says:
"'Barbara, come and kiss me.'
"I could have kissed a kangaroo just then, in the intensity of my relief; and so getting up quite readily, touch her gaunt cheek with my childish lips, and look the gratitude I dare not speak. To my surprise she draws me closer to her knee, passes one hand idly through my hair, looks not unkindly, into my wondering eyes, and murmurs more to herself than me, the name of 'Barbara.'