Kate came in to Aunt Jane’s room, one August morning, to say that they were going to the water-side. How differently people may enter a room! Hope always came in as the summer breeze comes, quiet, strong, soft, fragrant, resistless. Emilia never seemed to come in at all; you looked up, and she had somehow drifted where she stood, pleading, evasive, lovely. This was especially the case where one person was awaiting her alone; with two she was more fearless, with a dozen she was buoyant, and with a hundred she forgot herself utterly and was a spirit of irresistible delight.
But Kate entered any room, whether nursery or kitchen, as if it were the private boudoir of a princess and she the favorite maid of honor. Thus it was she came that morning to Aunt Jane.
“We are going down to see the bathers, dear,” said Kate. “Shall you miss me?”
“I miss you every minute,” said her aunt, decisively. “But I shall do very well. I have delightful times here by myself. What a ridiculous man it was who said that it was impossible to imagine a woman’s laughing at her own comic fancies. I sit and laugh at my own nonsense very often.”
“It is a shame to waste it,” said Kate.
“It is a blessing that any of it is disposed of while you are not here,” said Aunt Jane. “You have quite enough of it.”
“We never have enough,” said Kate. “And we never can make you repeat any of yesterday’s.”
“Of course not,” said Aunt Jane. “Nonsense must have the dew on it, or it is good for nothing.”
“So you are really happiest alone?”
“Not so happy as when you are with me,—you or Hope. I like to have Hope with me now; she does me good. Really, I do not care for anybody else. Sometimes I think if I could always have four or five young kittens by me, in a champagne-basket, with a nurse to watch them, I should be happier. But perhaps not; they would grow up so fast!”