Clarinda beamed on her with delight. A shirt was something she had
never succeeded in making right. It was one of the things which her
sisters had against her that she could not make good shirts. Any one who
could not make a shirt was deficient. Clarinda was deficient. She could
not make a shirt. Meekly had she tried year after year. Humbly had she
ripped out gusset and seam and band, having put them on upside down or
inside out. Never could she learn the ins and outs of a shirt. But her old
heart trembled with delight that the new girl, who was going to take the
place in her heart of her old dead self and live out all the beautiful
things which had been lost to her, had mastered this one great
accomplishment in which she had failed so supremely.

But Aunt Hortense was not pleased. True, it was one of the seven virtues
in her mind which a young wife should possess, and she had carefully
instructed Hannah Heath for a number of years back, while Hannah bungled
out a couple for her father occasionally, but Aunt Hortense had been sure
that if Hannah ever became David's wife she might still have the honor of
making most of David's shirts. That had been her happy task ever since
David had worn a shirt, and she hoped to hold the position of shirt-maker
to David until she left this mortal clay. Therefore Aunt Hortense was not
pleased, even though David's wife was not lacking, and, too, even though
she foreheard herself telling her neighbors next day how many shirts
David's wife had made.

"Well, David will not need any for some time," she said grimly. "I made
him a dozen just before he was married."

Marcia reflected that it seemed to be impossible to make any headway into
the good graces of either Aunt Hortense or Aunt Amelia. Aunt Amelia then
took her turn at a question.

"Hortense," said she, and there was an ominous inflection in the word as
if the question were portentous, "have you asked our new niece by what
name she desires us to call her?"

"I have not," said Miss Hortense solemnly, "but I intend to do so
immediately," and then both pairs of steely eyes were leveled at the girl.
Marcia suddenly was face to face with a question she had not considered,
and David started upright from his position on the hair-cloth sofa. But if
a thunderbolt had fallen from heaven and rendered him utterly unconscious
David would not have been more helpless than he was for the time being.
Marcia saw the mingled pain and perplexity in Da