MENSE APRILIS
ÆTAT. 9.
"Vixi, et quum dederat cursum fortuna, peregi. Felix! heu nimium felix! si litora ista nunquam tetigissem!"
Thanks to certain by no means homoeopathic doses of the Latin grammar in my early years, I was able to gather the meaning of these elegiac effusions, and when the last stanza embodying poor Pussy's posthumous wail was discovered to be none other than the despairing death-cry of the "infelix Dido" as immortalized by Virgil—the one step from the sublime to the ridiculous seemed to have been passed.
I looked at Nannette, and Nannette looked at me, and we burst into silent but irrepressible laughter. Nannette was the first to recover herself.
"We ought to be ashamed of ourselves," said she severely: "Honest grief is always respectable; and a fitting tribute to departed worth, no more than what is due from the survivors. I have no doubt but that Tommy and Pussy were most esteemed members of society, and that their loss has left an aching void in the family of which they were the youngest and most petted darlings. I have heard the history of this monument, and the village that has grown up around it, and if you will comport yourself more as a Christian being should in the presence of a solemn memorial, I will relate to you the interesting facts in my possession."
I immediately signified a due contrition and full purpose of amendment; when Nannette continued, still speaking with the gravity befitting the subject.
"This estate then, this large and respectable mansion, and these pleasant grounds in which we now sit, are the property in common of three most estimable ladies, all past their first youth, and all possessed of sufficient good sense and strength of mind to remain their own mistresses, which has procured for the very remarkable specimen of ingenuity now before us, from some ignorant townspeople, the sobriquet of the 'Old Maid's Village.'