After a few hours’ rest, a call upon the grandmother was proposed, and Augusta was to accompany her parents. But she did not wish to go. “Why, my daughter,” inquired the mother—“do you not wish to see your dear grandmother?” Augusta was silent. “You were delighted,” continued the mother, “with the idea before you left home—what has changed your mind?” Augusta made no reply—but she did not wish to go. Thinking that her reluctance was the offspring of a childish whim, or at most the effect of timidity at meeting one who, notwithstanding her relationship, was indeed a stranger, but which would be removed in a single half hour’s acquaintance, she insisted upon her going.
A walk of a few minutes brought them to the residence of this object of love and tenderness to the mother, but of distrust and terror to the daughter. They were ushered into her presence. The meeting of the younger and of her more aged mother was tender and mutually affecting. They embraced each other after the lapse of years, and each imparted and each received a kiss of friendship and affection. Tears flowed in copious streams, if not along the cheeks of her aged mother, down those of her daughter.
Augusta, young as she was, was an intent and interested spectator of the scene. She watched every look—marked every action—weighed every word. Her own time of being welcomed soon came, when the caresses of the grandmother were transferred from the daughter to the grand-daughter. She shuddered in the embrace—and her eyes, generally large and brilliant, rolled more widely and wildly; but she escaped the anticipated mastication, and at length breathed more at her ease!
Augusta was delighted, as she bounded forth from the gate into the path that led back to her lodgings, and was as much inclined to expedite her return, as she had been slow and reluctant in going.
Up to this time the intensity of her feelings was unknown, and even the nature of them was scarcely if at all suspected. But the secret was gradually developed, and at length the parents were able to explain many a circumstance and many a declaration in regard to Augusta’s change of feelings towards her grandmother, which, perhaps, with more consideration, they might have explained before, but which had been set down rather to the whim of the child than the unguarded expression of the mother.
On reaching her quarters, a young lady, to whom the casual mention had been made that Augusta expected her grandmother would eat her up, said to her—
“Well, Miss Augusta, your grandmother, it seems, didn’t eat you up.”
“No, she didn’t eat me,” said she, “but she tried to eat mother.”
Some circumstance at the moment intervening, the conversation was interrupted, but on the following day, it was renewed by Augusta herself, who, approaching her mother, said:
“Mother, what did grandma’ do to you yesterday?”