Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/629

 . 1, 1860.] she was thinking of a text, you know, Arthur, but we elderly people sometimes use wrong words.”

“Some elderly people do, certainly,” said Mr. Arthur Lygon.

It was a free and gentle passage of arms, but though victory was not decided, it did not seem to rest with the challengers, and therefore their leader deemed it fit to charge in person. She was making up the thin lips for a pleasant speech, when her exasperated recruit broke in, her voice shaky with anger.

“You may be glad enough to take the advice as I sent you, one of these days, Mr. and Mrs. Berry,” she said.

“My dear aunt,” said Mrs. Berry, now really alarmed (for who knows what confidences women have between one another, and who does not know that, by feminine ethics, a quarrel legally dissolves all obligations to keep old faith), “I must insist that you do not for a moment”

“I have not come to my years,” said Mrs. Empson, “to have the word insist used to me, and most of all by my own niece, whom I have knowd from a child.”

“Aunt,” entreated Mrs. Berry, more earnestly than it might have been supposed she could speak, “please don’t misunderstand me.”

“I am a stupid old woman, no doubt,” persisted Mrs. Empson, “and if I had not knowd it of myself, I should have been made aware of it to-night by these gentlemen, who have both been good enough to set their wits against a woman as is old enough to be the mother of one of them”

“And the grandmother of another, and that is me, eh, aunt?” said Mr. Berry, laughing. “Come, I am sure you are much too good-hearted a person to take anything seriously that was not meant so. Why, Marion, here, who loves you better than she loves anybody, was as much amused at your funny spelling as the rest of us, and you know that it is impossible for her to feel anything towards you but respect. Don’t get angry, but let us all have a glass of something comfortable together.”

This last straw broke the old camel’s back. The idea of being treated by her nephew-in-law like one of those old nurses, or common sort of people, who are to be blowd up all through the evening, and then smoothed down with a glass of spirits. Such was the way Mrs. Empson would have put it, if she had still possessed any power of setting forth her wrongs before proceeding to avenge them.

“Person, Mr. Berry—I am a person, I am well aware of that, and the next time this person troubles you with her handwriting or her presence, let me know of it, that is all.” And she made, all things considered, rather a vigorous clutch at a black bonnet in a chair near her. At which bonnet—one touch of millinery makes the whole female world kin—Mrs. Berry also darted, and began smoothing the ribbons, and pushing out the curtain with a tender elaboration that was artistically designed to go straight to the heart of her aunt, as were the niece’s touch upon the arm of her relative, and soothing words.

“Dearest aunt, if there is one thing in the world to which I may appeal with confidence, it is your feeling as a Christian.”

Other persons, who to be sure would know less of Mrs. Empson, might have thought that such an appeal was the one thing in the world that might be lodged with small advantage. But Mrs. Berry knew something of her aunt and something of human nature.

“I honestly hope, Marion, that I may presume to call myself a Christian, if”—she added with a furious look at the men—“these gentlemen will not think it is taking too great a liberty.”

Arthur’s handsome face looked as if he did think the liberty in question was being taken, but Mr. Berry only smiled good-naturedly, and once more rang the bell.

“Don’t ring the bell for me,” exclaimed the old lady, in renewed wrath, at the idea that the solvents were going to be asked for in order to pacify her.

“On the contrary, I am going to ring for Hester,” said Mr. Berry.

“Edward,” said Mrs. Berry, who was always very much in earnest indeed when she called her husband by his baptismal name, “I beg that you will prevent a menial from entering this room until my aunt has been perfectly convinced that your ill-placed raillery was only foolish, and not intended disrespectfully.”

“How long will the operation take, my dear, as both Arthur and myself would like a tumbler of whiskey toddy?”

“O! aunt, aunt!” cried Mrs. Berry, inspired, and kneeling on a footstool that she might the more compendiously embrace her rather surprised relation, who subsided into the arm-chair under the vigorous assault. “O, aunty, I always said that you were the dearest and kindest being in the world, and you do indeed show it to forgive such conduct. O, you do indeed!”

Mrs. Empson might, under other circumstances, have explained that she had done nothing at all in the way of forgiveness, but her niece pressed her down into the chair, and sobbed—at all events, sobbed with her shoulders—and youth will be served, as the proverb says. The aged Christian was in no position to explain her feelings.

“Aunt, dear,” continued Marion Victrix, pursuing her advantage, and putting the thin lips to the reluctant cheek—never was there such a double mockery of a kiss—” God bless you, and make me only half as good and as kind and as generous as you are.”

“It does not seem much to ask,” thought Mr. Arthur Lygon, who was regarding the scene with considerable disfavour, though he was not in a mood to care very much what went on in his presence.

“Begone, Hester,” cried Mrs. Berry, impetuously waving away that faithful domestic, the instant she entered.

“Eh!” said Hester, advancing as calmly as if she had received no instructions in an opposite sense. “Is the poor old soul ill? Dear me! Let me fetch her a drop of hot brandy-and-water, m’m.”

“Do, Hester,” said the implacable Mr. Berry, “and, while you are about it, fetch the spirit