Mrs. Phelps followed him with her eyes, and then put on a very thoughtful look, and for a few moments seemed to be communing with her own mind. Suddenly she laid one fore-finger down upon the other with emphasis.
“Yes, ’tis clear as that gas-light! I can see as deep as some folks can. He is not above forty, rich, respectable, and kind and pleasant-hearted as a child, and Mary’s beauty has evidently made an impression upon him. He is a bachelor, and old bachelors often fall in love with young girls! I do believe, now I think it all over, he is in love with her. But then, he is so rich and respectable! But Mary isn’t my daughter; how does he or any body know but she is respectable as he is himself? Plainly, there is something at the bottom of all this. Major Pierpoint is too honorable and moral for me to apprehend any evil coming out of it. Mary shall go up to-morrow, looking her best. Who knows what may happen? The poor child is not mine, but then I wish her to do as well as she can. I wonder what he said to her this evening. Mary, dear, come here child.”
Mary came forward with a half finished linen collar in her hands.
“Well, dear, what did Miss Clayton say to the handkerchiefs you took to her?”
“She said they were very neatly done, but that the price was too high—and told me she could not pay the bill unless you took off the ‘nineteen cents!’ ”
“How close some people are, especially rich old maids that have once been beauties! They have no children or husband to pick or peck at, and so they must pick and peck on those that have to do work for um. She don’t care about the nineteen cents—its only to have something to find fault with. To-morrow, at half past eleven, you call there for the seventeen dollars, and let her have the nineteen cents, if it will do her temper any good. Did Major Pierpoint appear displeased because I didn’t get the shirts there by six o’clock?”
Mary blushed, she knew not why, at this common-place question, and looking up and seeing her ‘aunt’s’ eyes fixed inquiringly upon her face, she became too confused to speak in reply—and, after one or two attempts to answer, dropped her head over the collar in her hand, as if sewing it.
“What is the matter with the child? What did Major Pierpoint say to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”