It had never been warmed excepting from the heat that had come up from the kitchen stove. For the first time in her long life, Aunt Betty found herself wishing there was a chimney and a large air-tight stove in it; it would be fitter for a young girl like this visitor.
But Marion had been by no means accustomed to luxuries. She made herself at home at once. She hung her hat upon a nail which was carefully covered with white cloth to prevent its rusting anything, and put her valise, not upon the table with the Bible, or on the clean, blue bed-quilt, but up in a corner by itself.
Aunt Betty watched all these movements, every now and then nodding her gray head in silent approval.
Then they went back to the kitchen, Marion taking a Greek play with her to read,—one of Euripides. She had promised herself much pleasure during this 146 short vacation in finishing the play which her class were studying at the end of the term.
Aunt Betty, walking back and forth around the kitchen, stopped now and then at her elbow, and peeped curiously inside the open leaves.
An object of Marion’s in taking the book had been to relieve her aunt of any feeling that she must entertain her; if she had been older and wiser she would have seen her mistake.
She was trying to puzzle out a line of the chorus, when a voice said close to her ear,—
“Be that a Bible you are readin’?”
Marion gave a little start, certainly there was nothing very Scriptural in the play.
“No-o-o,” she stammered; “it’s a Greek play, a—a tragedy.”