Page:Early Autumn (1926).pdf/22

 or two earlier, when she had been put completely to rout. It was seldom that Aunt Cassie met any one who was a match for her, and when such an encounter took place the memory of it rankled until she found some means of subduing the offender. With Miss Peavey she was completely frank, for through long service this plump, elderly virgin had come to be a sort of confessor in whose presence Aunt Cassie wore no mask. She was always saying, "Don't mind Miss Peavey. She doesn't matter."

"I find Sabine extremely hard and worldly," she was saying. "I would never know her for the same modest young girl she was on leaving me." She sighed abysmally and continued, "But, then, we mustn't judge. I suppose the poor girl has had a great deal of misery. I pity her to the depths of my heart!"

In Aunt Cassie's speeches, in every phrase, there was always a certain mild theatrical overtone as if she sought constantly to cast a sort of melodramatic haze over all she said. Nothing was ever stated simply. Everything from the sight of a pot of sour cream to the death of her husband affected her extravagantly, to the depths of her soul.

But this brought no response from Miss Peavey, who seemed lost in the excitement of watching the young people, her round candid eyes shining through her pince-nez with the eagerness of one who has spent her whole life as a "lady companion." At moments like this, Aunt Cassie felt that Miss Peavey was not quite bright, and sometimes said so.

Undiscouraged, she went on. "Olivia looks bad, too, to-night . . . very tired and worn. I don't like those circles under her eyes. . . . I've thought for a long time that she was unhappy about something."

But Miss Peavey's volatile nature continued to lose itself completely in the spectacle of young girls who were so different from the girls of her day; and in the fascinating sight