At breakfast-time Donald found a sad, cowed little woman waiting for him to go down to the dining-room. He tried to cheer her up by telling her how nice a time they were to have in bathing that morning, for the water was sure to be delightful2; but Aunt Crete shook her head sadly, and said she guessed she had better not go in bathing any more. Then she sighed, and looked wistfully out on the blue waves dancing in the sunshine.
“Don’t you feel well, Aunt Crete?” asked Donald anxiously.
“O, yes, real well,” she answered.
“Did it hurt you to go in yesterday, do you think?”
“No, not a mite,” she responded promptly3.
“Then why in the name of common sense don’t you want to go in to-day? Has Luella been trying to talk some of her nonsense?”
[133]
“Well, Luella thinks my figger looks so bad in a bathing-suit. She says of course you want to be polite to me, but you don’t really know how folks will laugh at me, and make her ashamed of belonging to me.”
“Well, I like that!” said Donald. “You just tell Miss Luella we’re not running this vacation for her sole benefit. Now, Aunt Crete, you’re going in bathing, or else I won’t go, and you wouldn’t like to deprive me of that pleasure, would you? Well, I thought not. Now come on down to breakfast, and we’ll have the best day yet. Don’t you let Luella worry you. And, by the way, Aunt Crete, I’m thinking of taking a run up to Cape4 Cod5, and perhaps getting a glimpse of the coast of Maine before I get through. How would you like to go with me?”
“Oh!” gasped6 Aunt Crete in a daze7 of delight. “Could I?” Then, mindful of Luella’s mocking words the night before: “But I musn’t be an expense to you. I’d just be a burden. You know I haven’t a cent of my own in the world; so I couldn’t pay my way, and you’ve done a great deal more than I ought to have let you do.”
“Now, Aunt Crete, once for all you must get that idea out of your head. You could never be a[134] burden to me. I want you for a companion. If my mother were here, shouldn’t I just love to take her on a journey with me, and spend every cent I had to make her happy? Well, I haven’t mother here; but you are the nearest to mother I can find, and I somehow feel she’d like me to have you in her place. Will you come? Or is it asking too much to ask you to leave Aunt Carrie and Cousin Luella? They’ve got each other, and they never really needed you as I do. I’ve got plenty of money for us to do as we please, and I mean it with all my heart. Will you come and stay with me? I may have to take a flying trip to Europe before the summer’s over; and, if I do, it would be dreadfully lonesome to go alone. I think you’d like a trip on the ocean, wouldn’t you? and a peep at London, and perhaps Paris and Vienna and old Rome for a few days? And in the fall I’m booked for work in my old university. It’s only an assistant professorship yet, but it means a big thing for a young fellow like me, and I want you to come with me and make a cozy8 little home for me between whiles and a place where I can bring my friends when they get homesick.”
He paused and looked down for an answer, and[135] was almost startled by the glory of joy in Aunt Crete’s face.
“O Donald, could I do that? Could I be that to you? Do you really think I could be of use enough to you to earn my living?”
He stooped and kissed her forehead reverently9 to hide the tears that had come unbidden to his eyes. It touched him beyond measure that this sweet life had been so empty of love and so full of drudgery10 that she should speak thus about so simple a matter. It filled him with indignation against those who had taken the sweetness from her and given her the dregs of a life instead.
“Dear aunt,” he said, “you could be of great use to me, and more than earn anything I could do for you many times over, just by being yourself and mothering me; but as for work, there is not to be one stroke done except just what you want to do for amusement. We’ll have servants to do all the work, and you shall manage them. I want you for an ornament11 in my home, and you are going to have a good rest and a continual vacation the rest of your life, if I know anything about it. Now come down to breakfast, so we can go in bathing early, and don’t you worry another wrinkle about Luella. You don’t belong to her[136] any more. We’ll send her a parasol from New York and a party gown from Paris, and she won’t bother her pompadour any more about you, you may be sure.”
In a maze12 of delight Aunt Crete went down to breakfast, and dawned upon the astonished vision of her sister and niece in all the beauty of her dainty white morning costume. They were fairly startled at the vision she was in white, with her pretty white hair to match it. Luella gasped and held her disapproving13 breath, but Aunt Crete was too absorbed in the vision of joy that had opened before her to know or care what they thought of her in a white dress.
No girl in the new joy of her first love was ever in a sweeter dream of bliss14 than was Aunt Crete as she beamed through her breakfast. Luella’s looks of scorn and Luella’s mother’s sour visage had no effect upon her whatever. She smiled happily, and ate her breakfast in peace, for had she not been set free forever from the things that had made her life a burden heretofore, and shown into a large place of new joys where her heart might find rest?
After breakfast Donald made them all walk down the board walk to the various shops filled[137] with curios, where he bought everything that Luella looked at, and lavished15 several gifts also upon her mother, including a small Oriental rug that she admired. They returned to the hotel in a good humor, and Luella began to have visions of luxurious16 days to come. She felt sure she could keep Aunt Crete down about where she wanted her, and her eyes gloated over the beautiful white dress that she hoped to claim for her own when they all went home and she had convinced Aunt Crete how unsuitable white was for old ladies.
She was quite astonished, after her morning talk with her aunt, to hear Donald say as he looked at his watch, “Come, Aunt Crete, it’s time for our bath,” and to see Aunt Crete walk smiling off toward the bath-houses, utterly17 regardless of her wrathful warning glances. It was rather disconcerting to have Aunt Crete become unmanageable right at the beginning this way. But in view of the fact that her hands were filled with pretty trifles bought by her cousin she did not feel like making any protest beyond threatening glances, which the dear soul whose mind was in Europe, and whose heart was in a cozy little home all her own and Donald’s, did not see at all.
Aunt Crete was happy. She felt it in every[138] nerve of her body as she stepped into the crisp waves and bounded out to meet them with the elasticity18 of a girl.
Luella, following a moment later in her flashy bathing-suit of
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