uded
a bit of wood with the slivered bark on it. One versed in the science of
forestry might have recognised the little stub of switch as a
peach-tree switch; one bred of the soil would have known its purpose.
Neither puckered-out lip nor peach-tree twig seemed to interfere in the
least with her singing. She flung the song out past them--over the lip,
round the twig.

With her head thrown away back, her hands resting on her bony hips, and
her feet clunking inside a pair of boys' shoes too large for her, she
crossed the lawn at an angle. In all things about her--in her gait,
despite its limp, in her pose, her figure--there was something
masterful, something dominating, something tremendously proud.
Considering her sparseness of bulk she had a most astoundingly big
strong voice, and in the voice as in the strut was arrogant pride.

She crossed the yard and let herself out of a side gate opening upon an
empty side street and went out of sight and ultimately out of hearing
down the side street in the hot sunshine of the late afternoon. But
before she was out of hearing she had made it plain that not only a
loving mother and a loving father, but likewise a loving brother and a
loving sister, a loving nephew and a loving uncle, a loving grandmother
and divers other loving relatives--had all been engaged in the
hill-climbing pilgrimage along a lion-guarded path.

The hush that succeeded her departure was a profound hush; indeed, by
comparison with the clamorous outburst that had gone before it seemed
almost ghastly. Not even the shrieks of the caucusing blue jays that
might now be heard in the oak trees upon the lawn, where they were
holding one of their excited powwows, served to destroy the illusion
that a dead quiet had descended upon a spot lately racked by loud
sounds. The well-dressed young man who had been listening with the air
of one intent on catching and memorising the air, settled back in the
hammock in which he was stretched behind the thick screen of vines that
covered the wide front porch of the house.

"The estimable Aunt Charlotte appears to be in excellent voice and
spirits to-day," he said with a wry smile. "I don't know that I ever
heard her when her top notes carried farther than they did just now."

The slender black-haired girl who sat alongside him in a porch chair
winced.

"It's perfectly awful--I know it," she lamented. "I suppose if Mildred
and I have asked her once not to carry on like that h