Aunt Crete looked round upon her visitors with a rested, rosy3 countenance4, which bloomed out under her fluff of soft, white hair, and quite startled her sister with its freshness and youth. Could it be possible that this was really her sister Crete; or had she made a terrible mistake, and entered the wrong apartment?
But a change came suddenly over the ruddy countenance of Aunt Crete as over the face of a child that in the midst of happy play sees a trouble descending5 upon it. A look almost of terror came over her, and she caught her breath, and waited to see what was coming.
“Why, Carrie, Luella!” she gasped6 weakly. “I thought you’d gone to bed. Marie’s just doing up my hair for night. She’s been giving me a face-massage.[118] You ought to try one. It makes you feel young again.”
“H’m!” said her affronted7 sister. “I shouldn’t care for one.”
Marie looked over Luella and her mother, beginning with the painfully elaborate arrangement of hair, and going down to the tips of their boots. Luella’s face burned with mortification8 as she read the withering9 disapproval10 in the French woman’s countenance.
“Let’s sit down till she’s done,” said Luella, dropping promptly11 on the foot of Aunt Crete’s bed and gazing around in frank surprise over the spaciousness12 of the apartment.
Thereupon the maid ignored them, and went about her work, brushing out and deftly13 manipulating the wavy14 white hair, and chattering15 pleasantly meanwhile, just as if no one else were in the room. Aunt Crete tried to forget what was before her, or, rather, behind her; but her hands trembled a little as they lay in her lap in the folds of the pretty pink and gray challis kimono she wore; and all of a sudden she remembered the unwhitewashed cellar, and the uncooked jam, and the unmade shirt-waists, and the little hot brick house gazing at her reproachfully from the distant[119] home, and she here in this fine array, forgetting it all and being waited upon by a maid—a lazy truant16 from her duty.
Did the heart of the maid divine the state of things, or was it only her natural instinct that made her turn to protect the pleasant little woman, in whose service she had already been well paid, against the two women that were so evidently of the common walks of life, and were trying to ape those that in the eyes of the maid were their betters? However it was, Marie prolonged her duties a good half-hour, and Luella’s impatience17 waxed furious, so that she lost her fear of the maid gradually, and yawned loudly, declaring that Aunt Crete had surely had enough fussing over for one evening.
They held in their more personal remarks until the door finally closed upon Marie, but burst forth18 so immediately that she heard the opening sentences through the transom, and thought it wise to step to the young gentleman’s door and warn him that his elderly relative of whom he seemed so careful was likely to be disturbed beyond a reasonable hour for retiring. Then she discreetly19 withdrew, having not only added to her generous income by a good bit of silver, but also having followed[120] out the dictates20 of her heart, which had taken kindly21 to the gentle woman of the handsome clothes and few pretensions22.
“Well, upon my word! I should think you’d be ashamed, Aunt Crete!” burst forth Luella, arising from the bed in a majesty23 of wrath24. “Sitting there, being waited on like a baby, when you ought to be at home this minute earning your living. What do you think of yourself, anyway, living in this kind of luxury when you haven’t a cent in the world of your own, and your own sister, who has supported you for years, up in a little dark fourth-floor room? Such selfishness I never saw in all my life. I wouldn’t have believed it of you, though we might have suspected it long ago from the foolish things you were always doing. Aunt Crete, have you any idea how much all this costs?”
She waved her hand tragically25 over the handsome room, including the trunk standing26 open, and the gleam of silver-gray silk that peeped through the half-open closet door. Aunt Crete fairly cringed under Luella’s scornful eyes.
“And you, nothing in the world but a beggar, a beggar! That’s what you are—a beggar dependent upon us; and you swelling27 around as if you owned the earth, and daring to wear silk dresses[121] and real lace collars and expensive jewelry28, and even having a maid, and shaming your own relatives, and getting in ahead of us, who have always been good to you, and taking away our friends, and making us appear like two cents! It’s just fierce, Aunt Crete! It’s—it’s heathenish!” Luella paused in her anger for a fitting word, and then took the first one that came.
Aunt Crete winced29. She was devoted30 to the Woman’s Missionary31 Society, and it was terrible to be likened to a heathen. She wished Luella had chosen some other word.
“I should think you’d be so ashamed you couldn’t hold your head up before your honest relatives,” went on the shameless girl. “Taking money from a stranger,—that’s what he is, a stranger,—and you whining32 round and lowering yourself to let him buy you clothes and things, as if you didn’t have proper clothes suited to your age and station. He’s a young upstart coming along and daring to buy you any—and such clothes! Do you know you’re a laughing-stock? What would Mrs. Grandon say if she knew whom she was inviting33 to her automobile34 rides and dinners? Think of you in your old purple calico washing the dishes at home, and scrubbing the kitchen, and ask yourself[122] what you would say if Mrs. Grandon should come to call on you, and find you that way. You’re a hypocrite, Aunt Crete, an awful hypocrite!”
Luella towered over Aunt Crete, and the little old lady looked into her eyes with a horrible fascination35, while her great grief and horror poured down her sweet face in tears of anguish36 that would not be stayed. Her kindly lips were quivering, and her eyes were wide with the tears.
Luella saw that she was making an impression, and she went on more wildly than before, her fury growing with every word, and not realizing how loud her voice was.
“And it isn’t enough that you should do all that, but now you’re going to spoil my prospects37 with Clarence Grandon. You can’t keep up this masquerade long; and, when they find out what you really are, what will they think of me? It’ll be all over with me, and it’ll be your fault, Aunt Crete, your fault, and you’ll never have a happy moment afterwards, thinking of how you spoiled my life.”
“Now, Luella,” broke in Aunt Crete solemnly through her tears, “you’re mistaken about one thing. It won’t be my fault there, for it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference, poor child. I’m real[123] sorry for you, and I meant to tell you just as soon as we got home, for I couldn’t bear to spoil your pleasure while we were here; but that Clarence Grandon belongs to some one else. He ain’t for you, Luella, and there must have been some mistake about it. Perhaps he was just being kind to you. For Donald knows him real well, and he says he’s engaged to a girl out West, and they’re going to be married this fall; and Donald says she’s real sweet and——”
But Aunt Crete’s quavering voice stopped suddenly in mild affright, for Luella sprang toward her like some mad creature, shaking her finger in her aunt’s face, and screaming at the top of her voice:
“It’s a lie! I say it’s a lie! Aunt Crete, you’re a liar38; that’s what you are with all the rest.”
And the high-strung, uncontrolled girl burst into angry sobs
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CHAPTER VI AN EMBARRASSING MEETING
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CHAPTER VIII AUNT CRETE’S PARTNERSHIP
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