and wholly
delightful. What amazing vigor! I am too old for her, that's the
trouble. Young Strong is far more her contemporary than I am. Why, she
is as much interested in every aspect of life as any boy in the village.
Before I left I had told her all that I knew, and a good deal that I
didn't."

"It is greatly to be regretted," said Miss Phoebe Blyth, pausing in an
intricate part of her knitting, and looking over her glasses with mild
severity, "it is greatly to be regretted that Aunt Marcia occupies
herself so largely with things temporal. At her advanced age, her acute
interest in--one, two, three, purl--in worldly matters, appears to me
lamentable."

"I often think, Sister Phoebe," said Miss Vesta, timidly, "that it is
her interest in little things that keeps Aunt Marcia so wonderfully
young."

"My dear Vesta," replied Miss Phoebe, impressively, "at ninety-one,
with eternity, if I may use the expression, sitting in the next room,
the question is whether any assumption of youthfulness is desirable. For
my own part, I cannot feel that it is. I said something of the sort to
Aunt Marcia the other day, and she replied that she was having all the
eternity she desired at that moment. The expression shocked me, I am
bound to say."

"Aunt Marcia does not always mean what she says, Sister Phoebe."

"My dear Vesta, if she does not mean what she says at her age, the
question is, when will she mean it?"

After a majestic pause, Miss Phoebe continued, glancing at her other
hearers:

"I should be the last, the very last, to reflect upon my mother's
sister in general conversation; but Doctor Stedman being our family
physician as well as our lifelong friend, and Cousin Homer one of the
family, I may without impropriety, I trust, dwell on a point which
distresses me in our venerable relation. Aunt Marcia is--I grieve to use
a harsh expression--frivolous."

Mr. Homer Hollopeter, responding to Miss Phoebe's glance, cleared his
throat and straightened his long back. He was a little gentleman, and
most of what height he had was from the waist upward; his general aspect
was one of waviness. His hair was long and wavy; so was his nose, and
his throat, and his shirt-collar. In his youth some one had told him
that he resembled Keats. This utterance, taken with the name bestowed on
him by an ambitious mother with literary tastes, had colored his whole
life. He was assistant in the post-office, and lived largely on the
imaginary r