“It was worse with mine,” said Aunt Jane. “I grew tired of some and others I forgot, till at last there was nobody left but the dog, and he died.”
“Was Philip’s father one of them?”
“No.”
“Tell me about him,” said Kate, firmly.
“Ruth,” said the elder lady, as her young handmaiden passed the door with her wonted demureness, “come here; no, get me a glass of water. Kate! I shall die of that girl. She does some idiotic thing, and then she looks in here with that contented, beaming look. There is an air of baseless happiness about her that drives me nearly frantic.”
“Never mind about that,” persisted Kate. “Tell me about Philip’s father. What was the matter with him?”
“My dear,” Aunt Jane at last answered,—with that fearful moderation to which she usually resorted when even her stock of superlatives was exhausted,—“he belonged to a family for whom truth possessed even less than the usual attractions.”
This neat epitaph implied the erection of a final tombstone over the whole race, and Kate asked no more.
Meantime Malbone sat at the western door with Harry, and was running on with one of his tirades, half jest, half earnest, against American society.
“In America,” he said, “everything which does not tend to money is thought to be wasted, as our Quaker neighbor thinks the children’s croquet-ground wasted, because it is not a potato field.”