d girl, and I am very fond of
you; but I know what I am about, and I behave as I intend to behave. My
brother James was a good man, though I never could understand the ground
he took about the Copleys. He had no more right to them--but that is
neither here nor there. His wife was a cat, and her mother before her
was a cat, and her daughter after her is a cat. I don't like cats, and I
never have had them in this house, and I never will. That's all there is
to it. If that woman comes here, I'll set the parrot on her."

"Scat!" said the parrot, waking from a doze and ruffling his feathers.
"_Quousque tandem, O Catilina?_ Vesta, Vesta, don't you pester!"

Miss Vesta sighed. "Then--what will you say to Maria, Aunt Marcia?"

"I sha'n't say anything to her!" replied the old lady, snappishly.

"Surely you must answer her letter, dear."

"Must I! 'Must got bust,' they used to say when I was a girl."

"Surely you _will_ answer it?" said Miss Vesta, altering the unlucky
form of words.

"Nothing of the sort! She has had the impudence to write to me, and she
can answer herself."

"She cannot very well do that, Aunt Marcia."

"Then she can go without.

"'Tiddy hi, toddy ho,
Tiddy hi hum,
Thus was it when Barbara Popkins was young!'"

Miss Vesta sighed again; it was always a bad sign when Mrs. Tree began
to sing.

"Very well, Aunt Marcia," she said, after a pause, rising. "I will
answer for both, then. I will say that--"

"Say that I am blind, deaf, and dumb!" her aunt commanded. "Say that I
have the mumps and the chicken-pox, and am recommended absolute
retirement. Say I have my sins to think about, and have no time for
anything else. Say anything you like, Vesta, but run along now, like a
good girl, and let me get smoothed out before that poor little parson
comes to see me. He's coming at five. Last time I scared him out of a
year's growth--te-hee!--and he has none to spare, inside or out.
Good-by, my dear."

CHAPTER XV.

MARIA

"My dearest Vesta, what a pleasure to see you! You are looking wretched,
simply wretched! How thankful I am that I came!"

Mrs. Pryor embraced her cousin with effusion. She was short and fair,
with prominent eyes and teeth, and she wore a dress that crackled and
ornaments that clinked. Miss Vesta, in her dove-colored cashmere and
white net, seemed to melt into her surroundings and form part of them,
but Mrs. Pryor stood out against them like a