“Well, when folks git married they allus go off on a trip. Course, they will. And me—I’ll be runnin’ the business all by myself. It’ll be great! Mr. Stagg will see jest how much value I be to him. Why, it’ll be the makin’ of me!” cried the optimistic youth.
Yes, Carolyn May heard it on all sides. Everybody was talking about the affair of Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda.
Every time she saw her uncle and her “pretty lady” together the observant child could not but notice that they were utterly wrapped up in each other. It is only between lovers who have been heart-hungry for long years, as these two had, that a perfectly open expression of affection is maintained.
The modest spinster and the bashful bachelor seemed to have sloughed off their former natures. They had developed a new and exceedingly strange life, as different from their former existence as the butterfly’s is from the caterpillar’s.
Miss Amanda could not go past the easy chair in which the hardware dealer was enthroned without touching him. He, as bold as a boy, would seize her hand and kiss it. Her soft, capable hand would linger on his head in so tender a gesture that it might have brought tears to the eyes of a sympathetic observer.
Love, a mighty, warm, throbbing spirit, had caught them up and swept them away out of themselves—out of their old selves, at least. They had eyes only for each other—thoughts only for each other.
Even a child could see something of this. The absorption of the two made Aunty Rose’s remarks very impressive to Carolyn May.
A week of this followed—a week in which the trouble in Carolyn May’s heart and brain seethed until it became unbearable. She was convinced that there would soon be no room for her in the big house. She watched Aunty Rose pack her own trunk, and the old lady looked very glum, indeed. She heard whispers of an immediate marriage, here in the house, with Mr. Driggs as the officiating clergyman.
Everybody in the neighbourhood was interested in the affair and eagerly curious; but Carolyn May could not talk about it. They thought she had been instructed not to speak of the matter, but the little girl only felt that she would cry if she talked of this event that was to make her uncle and Miss Amanda so happy and herself so miserable.
“Oh, Prince!” she sobbed, clinging around the dog’s neck out under their favourite tree in the back yard of the Stagg place, “nobody wants us. We never ought to have come here. Maybe it would have been better if we had gone to the poorhouse.