JIM’S AUNT
BY FRANCES BENT DILLINGHAM
“I wish you could take him in,” the minister said, almost entreatingly. “He isn’t a bad boy, you know; his family is quite respectable; but when his aunt said she couldn’t afford to take him into the country with her children, it seemed too bad for him to stay in the city.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Miss Lucinda assented hastily. “If only he wasn’t a boy!”
The minister sighed. “I want you to do what you think best.”
It was Miss Lucinda’s turn to sigh now—a long-drawn breath of surrender. “Well, I’ll take him,” she said.
The minister rose to go. “It’s very kind of you, Miss Tarbox; be sure I appreciate your self-sacrifice;” and then he added, in a hesitating sort of way, “You are always full of good works.”
The color flamed up in Miss Lucinda’s face. “Oh!” she exclaimed, lifting her proud head still higher, “I don’t do anything!” and the minister felt the usual sense of defeat he experienced in Miss Tarbox’s presence.
He was quite dejected as he went down the garden walk. “So excellent a woman,” he murmured to himself, and he mournfully contrasted her uncompromising manner with the flattering air of other single ladies of his parish as he glanced back furtively toward her parlor window.
But Miss Tarbox would have considered it unpardonable coquetry to peep after the minister, since he was an unmarried man, and she an eligible if not youthful spinster, so she went at once into the kitchen to prepare her supper. But the color did not at once fade from her cheeks as she moved about in her rapid, methodical manner, and she thought not so much of the boy who was to come, as of the man who had just gone. If the minister felt overcome in Miss Lucinda’s presence, she, too, had a similar feeling after he had left her with some unspoken word on his lips.