ed bring
another darky on the place she would take pleasure in scalding the
interloper with a kettle of boiling water. She sat in self-imposed
judgment upon their admirers, ruthlessly rejecting those courtiers who
did not measure up to her arbitrary standards for appraising the local
aristocracy; and toward such of the young squires as fell under the ban
of her disfavour she deported herself in such fashion as to leave in
their minds no doubt whatsoever regarding her hostility. In public she
praised her wards; in private she alternately scolded and petted them.
She was getting more feeble, now that age and infirmities were coming
upon her, wherefore the house showed the lack of proper care. They were
afraid of her, though they loved her with all their hearts and knew she
loved them to the exclusion of every living person; they were
apprehensive always of her frequent and unrestrained outbreaks of
temper. She shamed them and she humiliated them and she curbed them in
perfectly natural impulses--impulses that to them seemed perfectly
proper also.

Small enough were these faults when set up alongside the tally of her
goodnesses; moreover, neither of the two rebels against her authority
was lacking in gratitude. But it is the small things that are most
annoying usually, and, besides, the faults of the old woman were things
now of daily occurrence and recurrence, which chafed their nerves and
fretted them, whereas the passage of time was lessening the sentimental
value of her earlier labours and sacrifices in their behalf.

And here was another thing: While they had been getting older Aunt
Sharley had been getting old; they had grown up, overnight, as it were,
and she could not be made to comprehend the fact. In their case the
eternal conflict between youth and crabbed age was merely being
repeated--with the addition in this particular instance of unusual
complications.

For an hour or more the perplexed pair threshed away, striving to winnow
the chaff from the pure grain in Aunt Sharley's nature, and the upshot
was that Emmy Lou had a headache and Mildred had a little spell of
crying, and they agreed that never had there been such a paradox of part
saint and part sinner, part black ogre and part black angel, as their
Auntie was, created into a troubled world, and that something should be
done to remedy the evil, provided it could be done without grievously
hurting the old woman's feelings; but just what this something wh