"Oh, she didn't say much. She was just awfully nice, that's all.... She told me—well, she said, for one thing, that I cried too much. Only she didn't say it like that. She said that going about and crying wasn't much of a way of showing you were sorry. She said that if—well, if you really missed a person, the least you could do was not to go about making a pest of yourself, even if you couldn't really do anything to help."
"Oh."
"She said that the last thing that would please Mama herself was to think that all she had taught me came to no more than ... well, than crying. Then she said.... I don't think I'll tell you that, though."
"Well, don't, if you don't want to."
"She told me that, in a way, she realized I must feel it—about Mama—more than any one else, because I had been more with her lately than any one else—more dependent on her, she said, ..."
"Yes, I see."
"And that while it was harder on me, it put a greater responsibility on me, because, you see—oh, I can't explain it all! But she was about right, I guess."
"She told me something of the same kind ... not exactly like that, I mean, but—well, the same sort of thing. It helped, too. It's funny, to think of her understanding better than any one else—Aunt Selina!"
"Yes, isn't it? Well, you really never can tell about people." With which mature reflection Harry turned over and went to sleep. But his brother lay awake for some time thinking over what he had just heard, and as he thought, his respect for his aunt grew. Not only could she sound the depths of his own woe and give him comfort for it, but she could light on the one thing that would be likely to help Harry in his own peculiar need, and show it to him with ready and fearless tact. And what she had told Harry was practically the very opposite of what she had told him.
"I wish I could be like Aunt Selina," he thought.