“Your sister Hazel wouldn’t let her,” said Hugh, looking inquisitively at Eulalie’s healthful bloom.
“Oh, I got along. And I suppose those roses went to her head, poor old dear; it’s such a new thing for her to have them given her. Didn’t she chant pæans over them?”
“You couldn’t notice any pæans,” said Hugh, “but several fellows were trying to chant proposals to her besides uncle E. Ginger! but you ought to see Elvira now, Miss Eulalie; she’s all dimply and pink, and her hair isn’t slick, like it used to be, though it isn’t messy, either; it’s kind of crimpled up high, some way, like you’d raveled out a brown silk dress and piled up the ravelings. She wears new kind of things, too—dresses with jig-saw things—you know what I mean, frilly tricks that make you think of peach blossoms, or pie plant when it’s cooked and all pink-white and clear. Why, it’s true as preaching. I never knew her until I met her there at Lindale.”
“So my prim, old-maid sister has turned butterfly since she went gadding?”
“No, she isn’t a butterfly; she’s too well supplied with brains for that; she couldn’t keep that bunch of old worldlings hypnotized as she does if she hadn’t a pile of original ideas of her own, though the dimples and frillicues may have caught them in the first place.”
“Huh!” commented Eulalie, shortly. “I wonder how you happened to get so well acquainted with her, just passing through Lindale.”
“I couldn’t have,” Hugh owned; “takes time to learn to appreciate a girl like that. If it hadn’t been for your message, I suppose I never should have gone beyond the preface of her character; but when I saw the whirlwind she had stirred up among the dry leaves of the elderly boys’ hearts, I concluded to postpone the tramping trip and watch the fun a while. Honestly, she was a new experience to me.”
“I’m surprised to hear of her frivolity.” A slight, shrewish flavor crept into Eulalie’s smooth voice. “The way she used to persecute me for having a few beaux——”
“Oh, she doesn’t want them, nor encourage them,” Hugh quickly explained. “She just stays still, like a lamp, you know, that shines out soft and clear because it can’t help it, and they go bumping along and sizzle their wings. It isn’t her doings. They’re mostly all too old for her—why, do you know, Miss Eulalie, I had supposed she was older than I, and I discovered she was two years younger?”
“I hope that won’t prevent her being a good aunt to you,” mused Eulalie, with restrained spite.