The entire management of Mrs. Olaf’s household devolved upon her aunt, Johanna Vavrika, a superstitious, doting woman of fifty. When Clara was a little girl her mother died, and Johanna’s life had been spent in ungrudging service to her niece. Clara, like many self-willed and discontented persons, was really very apt, without knowing it, to do as other people told her, and to let her destiny be decided for her by intelligences much below her own. It was her Aunt Johanna who had humored and spoiled her in her girlhood, who had got her off to Chicago to study piano, and who had finally persuaded her to marry Olaf Ericson as the best match she would be likely to make in that part of the country. Johanna Vavrika had been deeply scarred by smallpox in the old country. She was short and fat, homely and jolly and sentimental. She was so broad, and took such short steps when she walked, that her brother, Joe Vavrika, always called her his duck. She adored her niece because of her talent, because of her good looks and masterful ways, but most of all because of her selfishness.
Clara’s marriage with Olaf Ericson was Johanna’s particular triumph. She was inordinately proud of Olaf’s position, and she found a sufficiently exciting career in managing Clara’s house, in keeping it above the criticism of the Ericsons, in pampering Olaf to keep him from finding fault with his wife, and in concealing from every one Clara’s domestic infelicities. While Clara slept of a morning, Johanna Vavrika was bustling about, seeing that Olaf and the men had their breakfast, and that the cleaning or the butter-making or the washing was properly begun by the two girls in the kitchen. Then, at about eight o’clock, she would take Clara’s coffee up to her, and chat with her while she drank it, telling her what was going on in the house. Old Mrs. Ericson frequently said that her daughter-in-law would not know what day of the week it was if Johanna did not tell her every morning. Mrs. Ericson despised and pitied Johanna, but did not wholly dislike her. The one thing she hated in her daughter-in-law above everything else was the way in which Clara could come it over people. It enraged her that the affairs of her son’s big, barnlike house went on as well as they did, and she used to feel that in this world we have to wait over-long to see the guilty punished. “Suppose Johanna Vavrika died or got sick?” the old lady used to say to Olaf. “Your wife wouldn’t know where to look for her own dish-cloth.” Olaf only shrugged his shoulders. The fact remained that Johanna did not die, and, although Mrs. Ericson often told her she was looking poorly, she was never ill. She seldom left the house, and she slept in a little room off the kitchen. No Ericson, by night or day, could come prying about there to find fault without her knowing it. Her one weakness was that she was an incurable talker, and she sometimes made trouble without meaning to.
This morning Clara was tying a wine-colored ribbon about her throat when Johanna appeared with her coffee. After putting the tray on a sewing-table, she began to make Clara’s bed, chattering the while in Bohemian.
“Well, Olaf got off early, and the girls are baking. I’m going down presently to make some poppy-seed bread for Olaf. He asked for prune preserves at breakfast, and I told him I was out of them, and to bring some prunes and honey and cloves from town.”
Clara poured her coffee. “Ugh! I don’t see how men can eat so much sweet stuff. In the morning, too!”
Her aunt chuckled knowingly. “Bait a bear with honey, as we say in the old country.”
“Was he cross?” her niece asked indifferently.
“Olaf? Oh, no! He was in fine spirits. He’s never cross if you know how to take him. I never knew a man to make so little fuss about bills. I gave him a list of things to get a yard long, and he didn’t say a word; just folded it up and put it in his pocket.”
“I can well believe he didn’t say a word,” Clara remarked with a shrug. “Some day he’ll forget how to talk.”
“Oh, but they say he’s a grand speaker in the Legislature. He knows when to keep quiet. That’s why he’s got such influence in politics. The people have confidence in him.” Johanna beat up a pillow and held it under her fat chin while she slipped on the case. Her niece laughed.