ily.

Beside the window Aunt Euphronasia was rocking slowly back and forth,
with little Benjamin fast asleep on her knees, and her great rolling
eyes, rimmed with white, passed from me to George and from George to me
with a defiant and angry look.

"I ain' seen nuttin' like dese yer doin's sence war time," she grumbled;
"en hit's wuss den war time, caze war time hit's fur all, en dish yer
hit ain't fur nobody cep'n us."

Throwing herself back on the pillow, Sally lay for a minute with her
hand over her eyes.

"I can laugh now," she said at last, raising her head, and she, also, as
she sat there, pale and weary but bravely smiling, glanced from me to
George with a perplexed, inscrutable look. A minute later, when George
made some pleasant, comforting remark and went down to join the crowd
gathered before the door, her gaze still followed him, a little
pensively, as he left the room. The bruise throbbed again; and walking
to the window, I stood looking through the partly closed blinds to the
street below, where I could see the dusty buggies, the switching tails
of the horses, bothered by flies, and the group of real estate men,
lounging, while they spat tobacco juice, by the red flag at the gate. In
the warm air, which was heavy with the scent of a purple catalpa tree on
the corner, the drawling voice of the auctioneer could be heard like the
loud droning of innumerable bees. A carriage passed down the street in a
cloud of dust, and the very dust, as it drifted toward us, was drenched
with the heady perfume of the catalpa.

"That tree makes me dizzy," I said; "it's odd I never minded it before."

"You aren't well--that's the trouble--but even if you were, the voice of
that man down there is enough to drive any sane person crazy. He sounds
exactly as if he were intoning a church service over our misfortunes.
That is certainly adding horror to humiliation," she finished with
merriment.

"At any rate he doesn't humiliate you?"

"Of course he doesn't. Imagine one of the Blands and the Fairfaxes being
humiliated by an auctioneer! He amuses me, even though it is our woes he
is singing about. If I were Aunt Mitty, I'd probably be seated on the
front porch with my embroidery at this minute, bowing calmly to the
passers-by, as if it were the most matter-of-fact occurrence in the
world to have an auctioneer selling one's house over one's head."

"Dear old enemy, I wonder what she thinks of this?"

"She hasn't heard it,