ich dressing-gowns and carefully
arranged hair, Aunt Katrina undoubtedly did suffer. Already her eyes had
begun to have something of a sunken look; to Margaret and Winthrop she
appeared sometimes to be seeing them through a slight haze, and to be
trying, though ineffectually, to pierce it. "That dreadful water on the
beach! that dreadful water!" was still her constant complaint.

"Do you think she would like to go down to East Angels?" suggested Dr.
Kirby to Margaret one morning. "The motion of a carriage she couldn't
bear at present, but she could go down very well in the _Emperadora_."

But Margaret thought she would not like it at all.

"How do you know, without asking, what I shouldn't like at all?" Aunt
Katrina demanded when Margaret repeated to her this little conversation.
Aunt Katrina liked to have the little conversations repeated. "Don't
imagine, Margaret, I beg, that you know all my feelings by intuition."

Later in the day came Evert. "Dr. Kirby has a fantastic plan for your
going down to East Angels to stay for a while, Aunt Katrina. But I told
him that you didn't like East Angels."

"Where did you get that idea? But of course from Margaret, who thinks
she knows everything. East Angels is a charming old place."

"Oh!" said her nephew, rather astonished, remembering various adjectives
she had applied to it; "decayed" had been a favorite one.

"I have always thought it charming," pursued the lady. And then she
began to enumerate its good points. It was too far from the lagoon to be
troubled by that tiresome sound of the water; it had no pines near it to
tease people to death with their sighing; there would be no old ladies
to drop in with cookies, and nibble; and there were no invalids, with
teacups being sent clinking up-stairs (Mrs. Rutherford herself drank
chocolate). The one objection was that Dr. Reginald would have a long
ride every morning to get to her. But Dr. Reginald, coming in at this
moment, gallantly volunteered, in case she should go down there, to
spend a week with them by way of beginning; in the evenings they could
play cribbage until she should feel drowsy, for she certainly would feel
drowsy down there among the--he had almost said "pines," but stopped in
time; then he thought of live-oaks, but remembered that she considered
them "dreary." Among the--he had nearly brought out "magnolias," but
recollected that she disliked their perfume. "Among the andromedas," he
concluded at last, p