Chapter V: Aunt Katharine Saxon

In the privacy of their room that night Kate confided to Esther two resolutions. The first was that she would not again, during her stay at her grandfather’s, needlessly expose her ignorance of any point of Bible history: “For if we’re going to get mother into disgrace, and make him think she never taught us anything about it, it’ll be a pretty business,” she ended with feeling.

To this Esther gave cordial assent, but she was not so sure of Kate’s wisdom in the other matter; for the girl, with her usual penetration, had guessed that the Eastern relatives held a somewhat exalted opinion of the superiority of New England to the rest of the United States, and announced her intention of correcting it to the best of her ability. Esther, whose loyalty to her own section was not of a combative sort, suggested mildly that people’s opinions about things didn’t alter them, and that the grandfather, at his advanced age, should at least be left to the enjoyment of any prejudices he might have in favor of his native section.

But the allusion to his age should have been omitted. Kate shook her head at this, and declared that he of all others was the one not to be spared. Was it not his pride and boast that time had not robbed him of either mental or physical vigor? No, no; she should not hold herself debarred from supplying him with new ideas on any subject. It was only when he stood on Bible ground that she should let him alone.

It was evident the next morning that on this ground he did not intend to let her alone, for at family prayers he read the pathetic story of David’s flight from his unworthy son, and his eyes sought hers for a moment with pointed meaning as he paused on the name of the loyal friend whose swift generosity remembered the fugitives, “hungry and weary and thirsty in the wilderness,” and who of good right met them again with rejoicing in their hour of victory.

The quaint old story held the girl’s absorbed attention to the end. She wished it were longer, and told her grandfather so after breakfast, adding that the way he read the Old Testament made it more interesting than common.

He received the compliment with complacence. “Well,” he said, “I guess I do read it better than some folks. I guess I’m a little like those men in the days of Ezra the scribe, who stood up before the people, and ‘read in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand.’”

Kate privately wondered how many more people in the Bible her grandfather resembled, but she refrained from suggesting the query, lest he should claim her attention at once for the whole list.

It was while they sat at table that morning that he said, looking at her with the sudden lighting of face which marks a mental discovery: “It’s your great-aunt Katharine that you put me in mind of. I knew there was somebody. It ain’t your looks so much; but a way you have.”

“Oh, grandfather, how can you?” cried Stella. “Kate, you won’t thank him much for that when you know Aunt Katharine.”

“She’s the one I was named for, I suppose,” said Kate. “I’ve heard mother tell about her. Well, if she’s disagreeable, there won’t be any love lost between us on account of the name. I never did like it particularly.”

“Disagreeable!” cried Stella, “why, she’s the queerest, most cross-grained, cantankerous—”

“Stella! Stella!” said her mother, severely. “Why will you prejudice your cousins against your poor Aunt Katharine?”

“My poor Aunt Katharine will do it herself quick enough,” said Stella. “Oh, yes,” she added with a little shrug, as she saw her mother’s lips parting again, “my mother’s going to tell you that Aunt Katharine has had a great deal in her life to try her, and that she is really a remarkably bright and capable woman. It’s perfectly true; and several other things are true besides.”

“The trouble with my sister Katharine,” said Ruel Saxon, setting down his cup of tea, which he had been drinking so hot that every swallow was accompanied by an upward jerk of the head and a facial contortion, “the trouble with Katharine Saxon don’t lay in her nat’ral faculties. It lays in a stiff-necked and perverse disposition. When she gets a notion into her head she won’t change it for anybody, and she’s wiser in her own conceit than ‘seven men that can render a reason.’”

“Grandfather himself frequently personates the whole seven,” observed Stella, with a nod at her cousins. She smiled, as if the memory of some past scenes amused her, then said soberly: “The fact of it is, Aunt Katharine is a regular crank. There’s nothing in this world that goes right according to her notion of it, but she’s particularly down on the ways of the men. She _would_ have a little patience with women—for she thinks their faults are mostly due to their being so down-trodden—if they only wouldn’t marry. I’ve heard her say so! She never married herself, you know, and she has an awfully poor opinion of the whole institution.”

Ruel Saxon looked as if he had a word to offer at this point in regard to his sister’s matrimonial opinions, but Aunt Elsie was before him. “Now, don’t you think,” she said, looking gravely at Stella, and incidentally including him in the passing glance, “that we’d better let the girls form their own impressions of Aunt Katharine? They may like her a great deal better than you do, Stella.”

“I’m sure I’m willing,” said the girl, with another shrug, and her grandfather, after wrestling with a little more extremely hot tea, seemed to be willing too; but he suggested that the girls should make an early call on their Aunt Katharine. It would give them a chance of forming the desired impressions, and besides she would expect it.

The girls accepted the suggestion promptly. Indeed Kate, whose interest in her namesake had been considerably whetted by what had been said of her, proposed that they should go that very morning; but to this Aunt Elsie’s judgment was again opposed. It seemed that Aunt Katharine had a special dislike to being interrupted in her morning duties by callers, and was disposed to think slightingly of people who hadn’t “work enough to keep them at home in the fore part of the day.” In the case of her nieces, who must certainly be excused for being at leisure, she might waive the last objection, but it was best to be on the safe side.

It was settled that the girls, accompanied by their grandfather, should go that afternoon, and if the call had been upon some distinguished person they could not have taken more pains with their toilets. Esther debated between three gowns, and finally settled on a soft gray, with plain white cuffs and collar, while Kate put on a pretty lawn and the dashing Roman sash which had been Aunt Milly’s parting gift.

It was less than a half hour’s walk across the fields to Aunt Katharine’s house, but the grandfather had decided to go by the road in state, and had Dobbin and the two-seated carriage at the door in good time. He had taken a little more pains than usual with his own appearance, and his daughter-in-law added the last touches with careful hand.

She was not much inclined to the giving of gratuitous advice; but, in the absence of the young people from the room, she did say, persuasively, as she adjusted the old gentleman’s cravat: “If I were you, father, I’d try not to get into one of those discussions to-day with Aunt Katharine. We want the girls to have as pleasant an opinion of her as possible, and you know she always appears at a disadvantage when she’s arguing with you.”

Sly Aunt Elsie! There were moments when the wisdom of the serpent was as nothing to hers. Ruel Saxon twisted his neck for a moment impatiently in his cravat, then replied meekly: “Well, I s’pose it does kind of put her out to have me always get the better of her. Katharine has her good p’ints as well as anybody, and I’d be glad to have Lucia’s children see ’em. If she don’t rile me up too much I’ll—yes, I’ll try to bear with her this afternoon. Solomon says there’s a time for everything: a time to keep silence and a time to speak; and mebbe it’s a time to keep silence to-day.”

In this accommodating frame of mind he started off with his granddaughters. Stella had declined an invitation to accompany them—possibly at her mother’s suggestion—though the fact that the way lay along one of her favorite drives, the old county road, had been something of an inducement to go.

It was one of those dear old roads, familiar in every part of New England, through which the main business of the region, now diverted to other highways, once took its daily course, but which, as its importance dwindled, had gained in every roadside charm. The woods, sweet with all summer odors, had crept close to its edge; daisies and ferns encroached on its borders, and its wavy line made gracious curve for the rock which had rolled from the hill above and lay beside it still, a moss-covered perch for children and squirrels. Here, the birds, not startled too often in their secret haunts, tilted on sprays of the feathery sumach, finishing their songs with confident clearness as the traveller drew near, and the swift brown lizards darted across the way before the very wheels of his carriage.

Miss Katharine Saxon’s farm was one of those which still had contact with the world through this deserted highway, but its comparative isolation had not affected its well-kept appearance. The house was white, with green blinds at the front and sides, but presented a red end to the fields behind, after the fashion of many in that section. The dooryard, a small rectangle, was shut off from the surrounding pastures by a high picket fence, though there were no shrubs, or even a flower-bed, inside the enclosure. The owner was not visible at any of the windows as her guests walked up the gravel path, which was too narrow to admit of their advancing in any but single file, but the brass knocker had scarcely fallen before she opened the door in person.

Even Esther had no remembrance of having seen her before, but there could be no doubt of her identity. In feature she was singularly like her brother, but her small thin figure was not trim and straight like his. She was so painfully bent as plainly to need the aid of the stout oak stick on which she leaned, and her hair, in striking contrast with his, was snowy white. She greeted her nieces with as little effusion as their Aunt Elsie, but her quick bright eyes betrayed a much keener interest as they darted sharply from one to the other.

“Well, Ruel, I s’pose you’re feeling just as smart as ever to-day, and just as able to bless the Lord that you ain’t as the rest of us are. Thank you, my rheumatism ain’t a mite better ’n ’twas the last time you was here, and my sight and hearing are mebbe a little grain worse.”

She delivered herself of this with surprising rapidity as she walked before them into the parlor, looking back with short quick glances at her brother. He responded by a rather discomfited grunt. Evidently she had the start of him. The parlor was of the primmest New England type, and so dark that for some moments the girls, sitting uncomfortably on straight-backed chairs whose hard stuffed seats seemed never before to have been pressed by a human figure, could scarcely make out what manner of place they had entered. It dawned on them by degrees, and if anything had been needed to enhance the charm of the parlor at the old homestead, the necessary contrast would certainly have been furnished here.

There was nothing to suggest that any of the ordinary occupations of human life had ever been carried on in this room. The pictures which Stella had banished would seem to have been dragged from their hiding-places and hung on these walls, and beside them there was nothing of mural ornament except three silver coffin plates framed in oak on a ground of black. The Northmore girls, gazing in wonder at these shining tablets, could scarcely believe that they were really what they seemed, but Stella, to whom they appealed on their return, promptly disabused them of the doubt. Most certainly these sombre ornaments had their original place on the funeral casket. It was not uncommon, she said, to find such relics displayed in old-fashioned houses in this region.

“There were some in our house once,” she added, “but I persuaded grandfather to let me lay them away in the best bureau drawers. He objected at first, but after I put up my Madonnas and cathedrals he succumbed. I believe he considered the place unfit to display the names of those who had died in the faith.”

But this was afterward. At present Esther was occupied with the strenuous effort to read the names thus honored of Aunt Katharine, and Kate was bending all her energies to discover the points in which she herself resembled that lady. The latter turned upon them now with one of her sharp glances.

“So you’re Lucia’s girls,” she said with deliberation. “Well, you ain’t as good looking as she was, neither of you. But handsome is that handsome does; and if you behave yourselves, you’ll do.”

The girls were somewhat taken aback by this, but Kate rallied in a moment. “You can’t hurt our feelings by telling us we aren’t as good looking as mother was,” she said gayly, “for we know she was a regular beauty. Father’s told us that over and over.”

“I’ll warrant he thought so,” chuckled her grandfather, “and he wasn’t the only one, neither. Why all the likeliest young fellows in town came courting your mother. She didn’t have to take up with a Western man because she couldn’t get anybody nearer home.”

“Perhaps it was because she had a chance to compare the Western man with those around here that she _did_ take up with him,” said Kate, quickly.

It was a fair retort; but the old gentleman’s forehead puckered for a moment as if he were not quite prepared for it. Before he could say anything in reply his sister had changed the subject, by asking, in her abrupt way, with her eyes fixed on her younger niece, “What do you think of this country?”

It is the stereotyped question from the old resident to the newcomer in all parts of the world. Perhaps, convenient as it is in bridging over the awkwardness of first acquaintance, it would be oftener omitted if society remembered that dictum of Dr. Johnson’s, that no one has a right to put you in such a position that you must either hurt him by telling the truth, or hurt yourself by not telling it. Kate Northmore had never faced the alternative under very crucial conditions, but whatever twinge there might be she preferred on general principles to resign to the other party, and she did so promptly now.

“Well, I can’t say I’m very much struck with the looks of it,” she said frankly. “It’s different from ours, you know; and these little bits of fields are so funny, all checkered off with stone walls. I haven’t got used to them yet.”

Miss Saxon looked at her niece without speaking, but the grandfather bristled at this. “Hm!” he grunted, “You Western folks seem to think nothing’s of any account unless it’s big. ’Taint the size of things, but what you do with ’em, that counts.”

“Well, it’s a wonder to me what you can do with some of this land of yours, it’s so rough and poor,” said Kate, lightly. “I don’t see how the farmers manage to make a living, scratching round among the rocks.” Then, with a good-natured laugh, she added: “Oh, we don’t despise the littles, out our way, as much as you think; but when it comes to wheat and corn, and things of that sort, we do like to see a lot of it growing all together. It looks as if there was enough to go round, you know, and makes people feel sort of free and easy.”

Perhaps, in his heart, Ruel Saxon doubted whether it was good for people to feel free and easy in this transient mortal state, but he had no chance just then to discuss the moral advantages of large labor and small returns, for Esther exclaimed, with a glance at her sister which was half reproachful: “But there are so many other things in a country besides the crops! For my part, I think New England is perfectly beautiful. I believe I’m in love with it all.”

Miss Katharine Saxon turned her head and looked at the girl attentively. The mother must have been very pretty indeed if she had ever looked prettier than Esther did at that moment. A delicate pink had risen in her cheeks, and her brown eyes seemed unusually soft and lustrous in the warmth with which she had spoken. She had made a lucky suggestion, and her grandfather took his cue instantly.

“We never pretended that our strong p’int was raising wheat ’n’ corn here in New England,” he said loftily. “The old Bay State can do better than that. She can raise men; men who fear God and honor their country, and can guide her in the hour of need with the spirit of wisdom and sound understanding.”

“We’ve got some of that sort, too,” said Kate, cutting in at the first pause. “The only difference is you started on your list a little ahead of us.”

But the remark was lost on her grandfather. He was on solid ground now, and he felt his eloquence rising. “You talk about our land being poor. Well, mebbe ’tis; mebbe we do have to scratch round among the rocks to make a living, but we’ve scratched lively enough to do it, and support our schools and churches, and start yours into the bargain. We’ve scratched deep enough to find the money to send lots of our boys to college—there’s been a good many of ’em right from this district. There was Abner Sickles that went to Harvard from the back side of Rocky Hill, where they used to say the stones were so thick you had to sharpen the sheep’s nose to get ’em down to the grass between; there was Baxter Slocum—thirteen children his father had—there were the Dunham boys, three out of six in one family.”

For the last minute Miss Katharine Saxon had been moving uneasily in her chair. Her square chin, which had been resting on her clasped hands at the top of her cane, had come up, and her eyes were fixed sharply on her brother.

“While you’re about it, Ruel,” she said, interrupting him in the dryest of tones, “you might just mention some o’ the _girls_ that have been sent to college from these old farms.”

Ruel Saxon, reined up thus suddenly in the onward charge of his eloquence, opened and closed his lips for a moment with a rather helpless expression. She waited for him to speak, her thin hands gripping the cane, and the corners of her mouth twitching ominously.

“Well, of course, Katharine,” he said testily, “there hain’t been as many girls. For that matter there warn’t the female colleges to send ’em to fifty years ago; but you know yourself there hain’t been the means to send ’em both, the boys _and_ the girls, and if it couldn’t be but one—”

He paused to moisten his lips, and she took up the word with an accent of intense bitterness. “If there couldn’t be but one, it must be the boy, of course,—always the boy. Oh, I know! Yes, and I know how the girls ’n’ their mothers have slaved to send ’em. It ain’t the men that have learned how to get more out of the farms; it’s the women that have learned how to get along with less in the house. There was Abner Sickles! Yes, there was; and there was his sister Abigail, too. I went to school with ’em both. She was enough sight smarter ’n he was; always could see into things quicker, ’n’ handle ’em better, but they took a notion to send him to college,—wanted to make a minister of him,—and she stopped going to school when she was fourteen, and did the housework for the family,—her mother was always sickly,—and then sat up nights, sewing straw and binding shoes to earn money for Abner.” She paused, with a note in her voice which suggested a clutch at the throat, then added: “She died when she was twenty. Went crazy the last part of the time, and thought she’d committed the unpardonable sin. It’s my opinion somebody _had_ committed it; but ’twarn’t her.”

It was the old gentleman who was moving uneasily now. “It was too bad about Abigail,” he said, with a shake of the head. “I remember her case, and ’twas one of the strangest we ever had in the church. I went out to see her once, with two of the other deacons, and we set out the doctrine of the unpardonable sin clear and strong, and showed her that if she really _had_ committed it she wouldn’t be feeling so bad about it—she’d have her conscience seared as with a hot iron; but she couldn’t seem to lay hold of any comfort. However, it was plain that her mind wasn’t right, and I don’t believe the Lord held her responsible for her lack of faith.”

The old woman gave an impatient snort. “If he didn’t hold somebody responsible, you needn’t talk to me about justice,” she said fiercely. “I don’t know how you and the other deacons figured it out, Ruel, but if it ain’t the unpardonable sin for folks to act like fools, when the Lord has given ’em eyes to see with, and sense enough to put two and two together, I don’t know what ’tis. I tell you the whole trouble grew out of that notion that a boy must be sent away to school just because he was a boy, and a girl must be kept at home just because she was a girl. If the Almighty ever meant to have things go that way why didn’t He give the men the biggest brains, and put the strongest backs ’n’ arms on the women? Heaven knows they’ve needed ’em.”

A good memory was undoubtedly one of Ruel Saxon’s strong points, but all recollection of the gentle warning his daughter-in-law had given him was put utterly to flight by this speech of his sister’s. He stiffened himself in his chair, and his nostrils dilated (to use a pet figure of his own) “like a war-horse smelling the battle from afar.”

“Katharine,” he said, “you darken counsel by words without knowledge. I don’t pretend, and nobody ever pretended, that Abigail Sickles or’ to have worked herself to death to keep Abner in college. Her folks or’ to have seen it in time, and stopped her. But you take too much upon yourself when you want to change things round from the way the Lord made ’em. It’s the _men_ that have got to be at the head of things in church and state; it’s the _men_ that have got to go out into the world and earn the living for the women and children; and it’s because they’ve needed the education more, and had more call to use it, that the boys have been sent to college instid of the girls. There’s reason in all things.”

She broke in upon him with a short, scornful laugh. “There’s a terrible good reason sometimes, Ruel, why the women have to earn the living for themselves, ’n’ the children too; and that’s to keep themselves from starving. Who earned the living for Nancy’s children when she brought ’em all home to the old house forty years ago? Well, I guess she ’n’ I earned most of it.”

She lifted her shoulders with an effort, and added: “Shouldn’t be quite so near doubled together now if it hadn’t been for bending over that spinning-wheel day in ’n’ day out, working to get food ’n’ clothes for those children, the six of ’em that John Proctor ran away ’n’ left. You talk about men going out in the world to earn the living. It would be a good thing for the women to go into the world too, sometimes. Mebbe they wouldn’t be quite so helpless then when they’re left to shift for themselves.”

The old man winced. “You had an awful hard time, Katharine, you ’n’ Nancy. John Proctor didn’t do his duty by his family,” he said; and then he faced her with a fresh impatience. “But that ain’t the way the men gener’ly do, is it? To hear you talk a body’d think the women had just naturally got to plan for that sort of thing. You want ’em to go out into the world, like the men, and make a business of it. I’d like to know who’d take care of the home ’n’ the children if they did. Home is the place for women. The Apostle Paul—”

There was a distinct flash of anger now in the small, bright eyes of Miss Katharine Saxon. “Don’t tell me what Paul said,” she exclaimed. “I tell you that notion o’ his, that there was nothing a woman had a right to do but marry, ’n’ have children, ’n’ tend the house, is at the bottom of half the foolishness there is in the world to-day. Women have just as good a right to pick ’n’ choose what they shall do as the men have. And some of ’em had a good deal better do something else than marry the men that want ’em. I tell you Paul didn’t know it all. ’Cording to his own account he had to be struck by lightning before he could see some things, and if another streak had come his way mebbe he’d caught sight of a few more that were worth looking at.”

Ruel Saxon gazed at his sister for a minute speechless. Then he said solemnly, “Katharine, there _is_ such a thing as blasphemy, and I’d be a little careful if I was you how I talked about the Lord’s dealings with his saints.”

He glanced at his granddaughters as he said it, as if to suggest that their morals, if not his own, might be impaired by such language.

“Laws, Ruel,” she said briskly, “I’d somehow got it into my head that that thing happened to him on the way to Damascus, and I didn’t know as you or anybody else called Saul of Tarsus a saint.”

She had him at a moment’s disadvantage, and the thin, high, mocking laugh with which she ended put the finishing touch to his irritation.

“As the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of a fool,” he said, with slow emphasis.

It should be observed in passing that Deacon Saxon’s use of the name which he had just bestowed by implication on his sister was, like the text itself, Solomonic. The person lacking, not in knowledge, but in moral sense, was the one whom the wise man called a fool, and there were moments when Katharine Saxon appeared to her brother to be so wanting in this respect as to come fairly under the title. It was not the first time that his frankness had led him to bestow it on her.

“Hey?” she said, leaning forward suddenly, with her hand curled about her ear.

That she had not caught the words was by no means certain. It suited her humor sometimes to offset his boastfulness as to his good hearing with a certain parade of her own slight deafness, and the occasions for making him repeat himself were often cunningly chosen. For once he did not do it. Perhaps, a second time, he remembered the presence of his granddaughters.

As for the girls themselves, they caught their breath, in the silence that followed, with something like a gasp. It is safe to say that they had never been present before at such an interview between relatives. Kate would not have minded a renewal of hostilities, but Esther, with better grace, seized the chance to effect a truce by turning the conversation into a more peaceful channel.

“Aunt Katharine,” she said eagerly, “you spoke of the spinning you used to do. Have you the old wheel now? I’ve heard mother tell what a wonderful spinner you were, and I should so like to see the very wheel you used.”

The old woman took her hand from her ear and turned toward the girl. “No,” she said, “I hain’t got the old wheel now; one of Nancy’s girls wanted it, and I let her carry it off. ’Twasn’t any account; pretty near as much wore out as I was when it stopped running.”

Evidently she felt that her passage-at-arms with her brother was ended. The sharpness of her expression relaxed, and she rose from her place with her ordinary manner. “I can show you a piece of linen your mother wove, if you want to see it. She’d have made a good spinner herself if she’d stuck to it, but I s’pose she forgot all about it long ago. Well, there’s plenty other ways for women to use their time nowadays, and I’m glad of it.”

The rest of the call ran smoothly. Miss Saxon could be even gracious when she was so disposed, and she treated her guests to a bottle of raspberry vinegar, which, in spite of the fact that she had brewed it herself, was not in the least too sharp, with fruit cake which time had brought to the most perfect mellowness. Her nieces would have left her house imagining that the “queerness,” of which she had given such ample proof, was confined to the one subject which she had discussed with her brother, had it not been for a little episode at the very end of the call, and for this, as it happened, the old gentleman was again responsible.

“How are you getting along with your garden, Katharine?” he asked. “I was thinking mebbe I or’ to send Tom down here to do a little weeding for you.”

A peculiar smile gleamed suddenly in the eyes of his sister. “Thank ye, Ruel, I’ve got all the help I need jest now,” she said. “Come out ’n’ take a look at my garden.”

She led the way to the rear of the house, and stepped before them into the trim little garden. It was of the old-fashioned sort, with vegetables growing in thrifty rows, and bunches of such flowers as phlox, sweet william, and bachelor’s buttons standing at the corners of the walks. It would have seemed a model of conventional primness, but for a curious figure seated on a three-legged stool, puffing tobacco smoke from a long Dutch pipe in among the branches of a rose-bush.

He might have been upwards of sixty; a dapper little man with a shining face, and a round head covered as to its top by an embroidered cap adorned with a crimson tassel. His waistcoat was of gay old-fashioned silk, across which was strung a huge gold chain, and a flaming topaz pin adorned the front of his calico shirt. At sight of the company issuing from the house he started from his seat and trotted up the walk to meet them, his hand extended and his face expressive of the most beaming cordiality.

Ruel Saxon, who was following his sister with a meekness of deportment which had sat uneasily upon him ever since the close of their discussion, started as his eye fell on this person, and threw up his head with a movement of surprise and irritation. “Good day, Solomon,” he said stiffly, as they came together, Miss Saxon having stepped aside to give free course for the meeting.

“Why, how d’y’ do, Deacon, how d’y’ do?” exclaimed the other, seizing the old gentleman’s hand, which, to tell the truth, had not been offered him, and shaking it furiously. “It’s been a terrible long time since you and I met. I—I was thinkin’ the other day I or’ to come round and see how you was gittin’ along.”

The deacon did not look overjoyed at the mention of the intended honor. “How long has Solomon been here?” he asked rather curtly, turning to his sister.

“Two weeks to-morrow,” she replied, with equal curtness. Then, turning to the little man, and from him to the girls, she said with marked politeness, “Mr. Ridgeway, these are my nieces, Lucia Saxon’s children. I guess you remember her.”

The little man pulled the cap from his head, revealing a crown as bald as a baby’s, and bowed himself up and down with the fervor of an Oriental. “Lucia Saxon? What, her that married the doctor and went out West? Why, sartin, sartin. She was one of the nicest gals I ever see, and the prettiest spoken. I—I guess your mother must ’av’ told you about me,” he added eagerly. “I took her home from spellin’ school once. She had spelled down everybody but me; but I was older’n she was, you know, a good deal older.” The delight of the remembrance seemed to overcome him, and he hopped first on one foot, then on the other, like an excited child.

Ruel Saxon’s face worked curiously while this performance lasted. “I don’t see but what your garden truck is getting on all right,” he said in the dryest of tones, “and I guess the girls ’n’ I’d better be going.”

He turned, making his way past the others, regardless of the fact that his footprints were left in the onion-bed which bordered the walk, and headed the line again toward the house.

“I shall write to mother that we have seen you,” said Esther, smiling back at the little man, who still stood bowing with his cap in his hands, and Kate gave him a friendly nod, though her mouth was twitching with amusement.

Aunt Katharine said good-by to them at the front door. “If you ever feel like seeing the old woman again, come down,” she said to the girls. “’Tain’t so very far across the fields, and you can follow the cow-path.” Then, without waiting to see them go, she closed the door.

“Grandfather,” Kate burst out when they were fairly off, “who in the world is that man, and how does he come to be at Aunt Katharine’s?”

“That man,” he repeated, deepening his tone with an accent of disgust, “is a poor half-witted cretur that belongs at the poorhouse. He stays there most of the time, but now ’n’ then he gets a restless spell and they let him out. Then he always comes round to your Aunt Katharine’s, and she takes him in.”

“Well, he’s the queerest acting man I ever came across,” said Kate, “and how he was dressed out, with his fine flowered vest and his jewellery!”

“‘Jewellery!’” grunted her grandfather. “He didn’t have on any compared with what he has sometimes. Why, when he really dresses up, that cretur covers himself all over with it.”

The girls looked so astonished that he apparently felt it incumbent on him to attempt some explanation of the man. “The fact is,” he said, “Solomon Ridgeway is as crazy as a loon on one p’int. He thinks he’s rich, though for aught I know he’s got as much sense about other things as he ever had. He thinks he’s terrible rich, and that the best way to keep his property, as he calls it, is in gold and jewels. He’s got a trunkful of it—wo’thless stuff, of course—that he carries with him everywhere. I s’pose it’s stowed away somewhere at your Aunt Katharine’s now.”

Kate really seemed past speaking for a moment, and Esther exclaimed in a tone of utter bewilderment, “Well, I should have thought Aunt Katharine was the last person in the world who would want such a man at her house. What makes her do it?”

“The Lord only knows,” said the old gentleman solemnly. And then he jerked the reins and urged Dobbin on his way in a tone of uncommon asperity.

The fact was, the question had a special irritation for him. That his sister, who flouted wise men and scorned the opinions of those having authority, should bear with the vagaries of a being like Solomon Ridgeway was a thing that passed his understanding. With the man himself he _might_ have had some patience, though his form of mania was peculiarly exasperating to his own hard common sense, and somehow he could not help resenting it that “Solomon,” of all names, should have lighted on so foolish a creature; but that, such as he was, he should be the object of Katharine Saxon’s pointed and continuous favor was trying beyond measure to her brother. He lapsed into a silence quite unusual with him, and the girls did not disturb it again on the way home.

They were longing to talk the visit over with Stella, but she was away when they reached the house, and Aunt Elsie asked no questions beyond an inquiry for Aunt Katharine’s health. It was at supper that the subject found its way into the family talk, and then Stella, who had just come in, opened it.

“Well, I hope you enjoyed your call on Aunt Katharine,” she said, smiling at her cousins.

“Of course we did,” said Kate, promptly. “You didn’t begin to tell us how interesting she is.”

“Oh, but you should have been there on a day when she and grandfather discussed things,” said Stella. “That’s the time when she really shows her quality.” She sent a demure glance at the old gentleman as she spoke. How she had become possessed of his intention to refrain from controversy is not certain, but somehow she had it.

He glanced with obvious embarrassment at his granddaughters. Then he set down his cup of tea, and faced his daughter-in-law. “Elsie,” he said, in a tone whose humility was really touching, “I meant to stand by what I said to you. I certainly did; but I couldn’t do it.” He cleared his throat and his tone grew firmer. “I couldn’t do it, and I don’t know as I shall be held responsible for it, either. The Bible says, ‘As much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men,’—and I s’pose that means women too,—but it don’t lie in me, and it never will, to keep my mouth shut while folks are advancing such notions as Katharine did this afternoon. I did contend with her; I certainly did.”

The Northmore girls could not keep straight faces, and Stella broke into a delighted giggle. “I’m sure ’twas your duty, grandpa, and I’m glad you did it,” she said. “What was it this time; woman’s rights, or the folly of getting married, or what?”

She glanced at her cousins as she asked the question, and Esther spoke first. “It was education partly, and the question whether women ought not to be as free as men to choose what they shall do. I must say that for my part I thought Aunt Katharine made some real good points, though of course she needn’t have been quite so bitter.”

“It was my speaking about Abner Sickles that stirred her up to begin with,” said the old gentleman, still addressing himself in half-apologetic tone to Aunt Elsie. “That put her in mind of his sister Abigail, and how she worked herself to death helping him through college.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if helping Abner was the greatest comfort the poor girl had,” observed Aunt Elsie.

The unemphatic way in which she sometimes made important suggestions was one of Aunt Elsie’s peculiarities. No one spoke for a minute, and she turned the conversation away from Aunt Katharine by suddenly asking a question on a wholly different subject.