“Certainly, I believe there can be—more likely, more easy, more possible with us than in Europe. I know of many such, where what was in youth a friendship, limited by conventions, became, as years went on, a larger, deeper, more valuable relation, and yet only and always a friendship.”
“Thank you!”
“I think myself that when women—married women—grow wise, they will want their husbands to have women friends. Margaret would say, ‘That is an old maid’s opinion.’ Nevertheless, it is mine, and, as I have chosen never to marry, it is valuable. The old maid is a sort of neutral, with the wisdom of both sexes.”
“I should like to choose my husband’s female friends.”
“Should you? I have not talked it out yet, but now I must go. I want to see how your creditor behaves. He may be a true Shylock and want—how many pounds do you weigh, dear?”
“You are horrid, aunty! I certainly do not think you have settled my questions.”
“How can I? or you? or he, for that matter? Time, dear, not only answers letters, but also doubts and difficulties. As a consulting physician, I am told, he is unsurpassed. You are, naturally, in a state of unease to-day, and had better wait until you see what kind of a draft on the bank of gratitude you are called on to pay, or honor, if you like the word better. I don’t know whether, nowadays, commercial men use the word, or the thing. You might send him a silver pitcher, the inscription to be, ‘To my preserver, from the preserved,’ or else—”
“Go away, bad aunty!” cried Rose, laughing. Once alone, she began upon her coffee and rolls, and wished it was next month, and thus, like Carington, turned over her hot chestnuts to pussy-cat time. They were too hot for her.
Miss Anne went out on the porch, and began watching, with the interest she took in almost all earthly pursuits, Ned’s efforts to tie a salmon-fly, while Dick, beside him, was feeding the drosera’s hairy leaves with minute black gnats, and considering, through a lens, the ferocious certainty with which the vegetable monster closed upon the captives cast among its sensitive limbs. Presently Dick said to her:
“Aunt Anne, is father very angry with Jack?”