"You would join the club, wouldn't you?" asked Betty anxiously.
"And be run away from, like the stout governesses, I dare say."
There was an attempt at a serious expression, but Miss Leicester could not help laughing a little. Down came Miss Mary at this moment, with Letty behind her, carrying cushions, and Betty sprang up to help make the couch ready.
"I wish that you would belong, too, and come with us on wheels," said she, returning to the subject that had been interrupted. "You could drive to the meetings and be head-member, Aunt Mary." But Aunt Mary was tired that day, and wished to have no demands made upon her. There were days when Betty had a plan for every half-hour, remarked Aunt Barbara indulgently.
"Suppose you come out to the garden with me to pick some raspberries?" and Betty was quietly removed from the weak nerves of Aunt Mary, who plaintively said that Betty had almost too much life.
"Too much life! Not a bit of it," said Serena, who was the grandniece's chief upholder and champion. "We did need waking up, 't was a fact, Miss Leicester; now, wa'n't it? It seemed just like old times, that night of the tea-party. Trouble is, we've all got to bein' too master comfortable, and thought we couldn't step one foot out o' the beaten rut. 'T is the misfortune o' livin' in a little place."
And Serena marched back to the kitchen, carrying the empty glass from which Miss Mary Leicester had taken some milk, as if it were the banner of liberty.
She put it down on the clean kitchen-table. "Too much life!" the good woman repeated scornfully. "I'd like to see a gal that had too much life for me. I was that kind myself, and right up an' doin'. All these Tideshead gals behave as slow as the everlastin' month o' March. Fussin' about their clothes, and fussin' about 'you do this' and 'I can't do that,' an' lettin' folks that know something ride right by 'em. See this little Betty, now, sweet as white laylocks, I do declare. There she goes 'long o' Miss Barbary, out into the ros'berry bushes."
"Aunt Barbara," Betty was saying a few minutes later, as one knelt each side of the row of white raspberries,—"Aunt Barbara, do you like best being grown up or being about as old as I am?"
"Being grown up, I'm sure, dear," replied the aunt, after serious reflection.