"Goodness sake, Aunt Jane! aren't you ever going to take a bath?"
"Nonsense!" replied her visitor. "I don't believe in all this wetting and slopping. The Scripture says, 'Whoso washeth his feet, his whole body shall be made clean.'"
Miss McCoy had numberless theories for other people's conduct, usually backed by well-chosen texts, and urged them with no regard for anybody's feelings. Even the authority of parents had no terrors for her.
Sipping her tea from the saucer with deep swattering inhalations, she fixed her prominent eyes upon the two boys as they ploughed their way through their bread and butter. Nothing must be left on the plate, in the table ethics of that time. The meal was simple in the extreme. A New Hampshire farm furnished few luxuries, and the dish of quince preserves had already been depleted by her.
"Mahala," she said with solemn determination, "those boys eat too much butter."
Mrs. Fernald flushed up to the edging of her cap. "I think I must be the judge of what my children eat at my table, Aunt Jane," she answered, not too gently.
Here Mr. Fernald interposed with a "soft answer." (He had never lost faith in the efficacy of these wrath turners, even on long repeated failure. As a matter of fact, to his wife's temper, a soft answer, especially an intentionally soft answer, was a fresh aggravation.) "The missionary, now, he praised our butter; said he never got any butter in China, or wherever 'tis he lives."
"He is a man of God," announced Miss McCoy. "If there is anybody on this poor earth deserving reverence, it is a missionary. What they endure for the Gospel is a lesson for us all. When I am taken I intend to leave all I have to the Missionary Society. You know that."
They knew it and said nothing. Their patience with her was in no way mercenary.
"But what I am speaking of is children," she continued, not to be diverted from her fell purpose. "Children ought not to eat butter."