m he supposed to be without imagination, had created this
consoling belief out of her own mental vacancy.

"Oh, he wanted to worry me all right, there's no doubt about that," he
replied.

"He hasn't spoken to me when he could help it for twenty years," pursued
his aunt, who was so possessed by the idea of her own relation to her
husband that she was incapable of dwelling upon any other.

"I wouldn't talk about it, mother, if I were you," said Susan with
resolute cheerfulness.

"I don't know why I shouldn't talk about it. It's all I've got to talk
about," returned Mrs. Treadwell peevishly; and she added with smothered
resentment, "Even my children haven't been any comfort to me since they
were little. They've both turned against me because of the way their
father treats me. James hardly ever has so much as a word to say to me."

"But I do, mother. How can you say such an unkind thing to me?"

"You never do the things that I want you to. You know I'd like you to go
out and enjoy yourself and have attention as other girls do."

"You are disappointed because I'm not a belle like Abby Goode or Jinny
Pendleton," said Susan with the patience that is born of a basic sense
of humour. "But I couldn't help that, could I?"

"Any girl in my day would have felt badly if she wasn't admired,"
pursued Mrs. Treadwell with the venom of the embittered weak, "but I
don't believe you'd care a particle if a man never looked at you twice."

"If one never looked at me once, I don't see why you should want me to
be miserable about it," was Susan's smiling rejoinder; "and if the girls
in your day couldn't be happy without admiration, they must have been
silly creatures. I've a life of my own to live, and I'm not going to let
my happiness depend on how many times a man looks at me." In the clear
light of her ridicule, the spectre of spinsterhood, which was still an
object of dread in the Dinwiddie of the eighties, dissolved into a
shadow.

"Well, we've about finished, I believe," remarked Oliver, closing the
case over which he was stooping, and devoutly thanking whatever
beneficent Powers had not created him a woman. "I'll send for these
sometime to-morrow, Aunt Belinda."

"You'd just as well spend the night," urged Mrs. Treadwell stubbornly.
"He need never know of it."

"But I'd know of it--that's the great thing--and I'd never forget it."

Rising unsteadily from the box, she stood with the ends of her purple
shawl clutched tightly