"Aunt Pen," said Mel, leaning on the point of her scissors, "you know very well that I have to make my own dresses or go without them. And you have kept me running your idle errands, up and down two flights of stairs, to the doctor's and the druggist's, and goodness knows where and all, till I haven't a thread of any thing that is fit to be seen. You've been posturing this grand finale of yours, too, all the last three weeks, and it's time you had it perfect now; and you must let me alone till I get my gown done."
"It will do to wear at my funeral," said Aunt Pen bitterly, as she concluded.
"No, it won't," said Mel, doggedly; "it's red."
"Red!" cried Aunt Pen, suddenly opening her eyes, and half raising on one hand. "What in wonder have you bought a red dress for? You are quite aware that I can't bear the least intimation of the color. My nerves are in such a state that a shred of red makes me—"
"You won't see it, you know," said Mel in what did seem to me an unfeeling manner.
"No," said Aunt Pen. "Very true. I sha'n't see it. But what," added she presently snapping open her eyes, "considered as a mere piece of economy, you bought a red dress for when you are immediately going into black, passes common-sense to conjecture! You had better send it down and have it dyed at once before you cut it, for the shrinkage will spoil it forever if you don't."
"Much black I shall go into," said Mel.
Maria laughed. Aunt Pen cried.
"Aunt Pen," said the cruel Mel, "if you were going to die you wouldn't be crying. Dying people have no tears to shed, the doctors say."
"Somebody ought to cry," said poor Aunt Pen, witheringly. "Don't talk to me about doctors," she continued, after a silence interrupted only by the snipping of the scissors. "They are a set of quacks. They know nothing. I will have all the doctors in town at my funeral for pall-bearers. It will be a satire too delicate for them to appreciate, though. Speaking of that occasion, Helen," she went on, turning to me as a possible ally, "I have so many friends that I suppose the house will be full."