and I do. You’d climb the fence if you could.”
“With the other cats?” said Hetty lightly. “See! I am putting the hyacinths in your own little vase. I unpacked your china and books last night. Not a thing was even nicked. You shall arrange them in this jolly corner cupboard after breakfast. It looks as if it were made a-puppose, as Homer says. He has bumped his head against strange doors and skinned his poor nose against unexpected corners twenty times this morning. He says: ‘Now—I s’pose it’s the bran-new house what oxcites me so. I allers gits oxcited in a strange place.’”
The well-meant diversion was ineffectual.
“His oxcitement ought to be chronic, then! Ugh! that water is scalding hot!” shrinking from the sponge in Hetty’s hand. “For we’ve done nothing but ‘move on’ ever since I can recollect. I overheard mother say once, with a sort of reminiscent sigh, that our ‘longest pastorate was in Cincinnati.’ We were there just four years. We were six months in Chillicothe, and seven in Ypsilanti. Then there was a year in Memphis, and eighteen months in Natchez, and thirteen in Davenport. The Little Rock church had a strong constitution. We stayed there two years and one week. It’s my opinion that he is the Wandering Jew, and we are one of the Lost Tribes.”
She smiled sour approbation of her sarcastic sally, jerking her head backward to bring Hetty’s face within range of her vision. The deft fingers were fastening strings and straps over the misshapen shoulders. The visage was grave, but always kind to her difficult charge.
“You think that is irreverent,” Hester fretted, wrinkling her forehead and beetling her eyebrows. “It isn’t a circumstance to what I am thinking all the time. Some day I shall be left to myself and my bosom devil long enough to spit it all out. It’s just bottling up, like the venom in Macbeth’s witches’ toad that had sweltered so long under a stone. But for you, crosspatch, all would have been said and done long ago.”
“You wouldn’t make your mother unhappy if you could help it,” Hetty said cheerily. “And it isn’t flattering to her to compare her daughter to a toad.”
Hester was silent. As she sat in Hetty’s lap, it could be seen that she was not larger than a puny child of seven or eight. The curved spine bowed and heightened the thin shoulders; she had never walked a step since the casualty that nearly cost her her life. Only the face and hands were uninjured. The latter were exquisitely formed, the features were fine and clearly cut, and susceptible to every change of emotion. That the gentle reproof had not wrought peaceable fruits was apparent from her expression. The misfit in her organization was more painfully perceptible to herself early in the day than afterward. She seemed to have lost consciousness of her unlikeness to other people while asleep, and to be compelled to readjust mental and physical conditions every morning. Hetty dreaded the process, yet was hardly aware of the full effect upon her own spirits, or why she so often went down to breakfast jaded and appetiteless.
“I often ask myself,” resumed Hester, with slow malignity, repulsive in one of her age and relation to those she condemned—“if children ever really honor their parents. We won’t waste ammunition upon him—but there is my mother. She is a pattern of all angelic virtues, and a woman of remarkable mental endowments. You have told me again and again that she is the best person you ever knew—patient, heroic, loving, loyal, and so on to the end of the string! You tell over her perfections as a Papist tells her beads. The law of kindness is in her mouth; and her children shall arise and call her blessed, and she ought not to be afraid of the snow for her household while her sister and her slave Tony are to the fore. Don’t try to stop me, or the toad will spit at you! I say that this, one would think, impossible She, the modern rival of Solomon’s pious and prudish wise woman—is weak and unjust and——”
Hetty interrupted the tirade by rising and laying the warped frame, all a-quiver with excitement, upon the bed.
“You would better get your sleep out”—covering her up. “When you awake again you will behave more like a reasonable creature. I cannot stay here and listen to vulgar abuse of your mother and my best friend.”
She said it in firm composure, drew down the shades, and without another glance at the convulsed heap sobbing under the bedclothes, left the chamber. Outside the door she paused as if expecting to be recalled, but no summons came. She shook her head with a sad little smile and passed down to the breakfast room.
Father, mother, and four children were at the table. Mr. Wayt, in dressing jacket, slippers, and silk skull cap, a cup of steaming chocolate at his right hand, was engrossed in the morning paper. A pair of scissors was beside his plate, that he might clip out incident or statistics which might be useful in the preparation of his wide-awake sermons. He made no sign of recognition at the entrance of his wife’s sister; Mrs. Wayt smiled affectionately and lifted her face for a good-morning salute, indicating by an expressive gesture her surprise and pleasure at having found room and meal in such attractive order. Long practice had made her an adept in pantomime. The boys nodded over satisfactory mouthfuls; pretty Fanny pulled her aunt down for a hug as she passed; even the baby made a mute rosebud of her mouth and beckoned Hetty not to overlook her.
Mr. Wayt’s digestion was as idiosyncratic as his nervous system. While the important unseen apparatus carried on the business of assimilation, the rest of the physical man was held in quiescent subjugation. Agitation of molecular centers might entail ruinous consequences. He reasoned ably upon this point, citing learned authorities in defense of the dogma that simultaneous functionation—such as animated speech or auricular attention and digestion—is an impossibility, and referring to the examples of dumb creatures to prove that rest during and after eating is a natural law.
He raised his eyes above the margin of his newspaper at the clink of the chocolate pot against the cup in Hetty’s hand. The questioning gaze met a goodly sight. His wife’s sister wore a buff gingham, finished at throat and wrists with white cambric ruffles, hemmed and gathered by herself. Her dark brown hair was in perfect order; her sleeves were pushed back from strong, shapely wrists. She always gave one the impression of clean-limbedness, elasticity, and neatness. She was firm of flesh and of will. The prettier woman at the head of the table was flaccid beside her. The eyes of the younger were fearless in meeting the master’s scrutiny, those of his wife were wistful, and clouded anxiously in passing from one to the other.
“For Hester,” said Hetty, in a low voice, looking away from Mr. Wayt to her sister. “She is tired, and will take her breakfast in bed.”
“I remonstrate”—Mr. Wayt’s best audience tones also addressed his wife—“as I have repeatedly had occasion to do, against the practice of pampering an invalid until her whims dominate the household. Not that I have the least hope that my protest will be heeded. But as the child’s father, I cannot, in conscience, withhold it.”
Light scarlet flame, in which her features seemed to waver, was blown across Hetty’s face. She set down the pot, poured back what she had taken from it, and with a reassuring glance at her sister’s pleading eyes, went off to the kitchen. There she hastened to find milk, chocolate, and saucepan, and to prepare a foaming cup of Hester’s favorite beverage; Homer, meanwhile, toasting a slice of bread, delicately and quickly.
Hester’s great eyes were raised to her aunt from lids sodden with tears; her lips trembled unmanageably in trying to frame her plea.
“Forgive me! please forgive me!” she sobbed. “You know what my morning fiend is. And I am not brave like you, or patient like mother!”
Hetty fondled the hot little hands.
“Let it pass, love. I was not angry, but some subjects are best left untouched between us. Here is your breakfast. Homer says that I ‘make chawkerlette jes’
