-ayes," she demanded rather angrily as we came
in.

"Done what?" asked Uncle Peabody.

"Shinin' up to that Perry woman--ain't ye?--ayes! I see you're bound to
git married--ayes!"

I had no idea what it meant to get married but I made up my mind that it
was something pretty low and bad. For the moment I blamed Uncle Peabody.

Aunt Deel's voice and manner seemed to indicate that she had borne with
him to the limit of her patience.

"Delia," said my uncle, "I wouldn't be so--"

Again he checked himself for fear of going too far, I suppose.

"My heart! my heart!" Aunt Deel exclaimed and struggled to her feet
sobbing, and Uncle Peabody helped her to the lounge. She was so ill the
rest of the day that my uncle had to go for the doctor while I bathed
her forehead with cold water.

Poor Uncle Peabody! Every step toward matrimony required such an outlay
of emotion and such a sacrifice of comfort that I presume it seemed to
be hardly worth while.

Yet I must be careful not to give the reader a false impression of my
Aunt Deel. She was a thin, pale woman, rather tall, with brown hair and
blue eyes and a tongue--well, her tongue has spoken for itself. I
suppose that she will seem inhumanly selfish with this jealousy of her
brother.

"I promised ma that I would look after you and I'm a-goin' to do
it--ayes!" I used to hear her say to my uncle.

There were not many married men who were so thoroughly looked after.
This was due in part to her high opinion of the Baynes family, and to a
general distrust of women. In her view they were a designing lot. It was
probably true that Mrs. Perry was fond of show and would have been glad
to join the Baynes family, but those items should not have been set down
against her. There was Aunt Deel's mistake. She couldn't allow any
humanity in other women.

She toiled incessantly. She washed and scrubbed and polished and dusted
and sewed and knit from morning until night. She lived in mortal fear
that company would come and find her unprepared--Alma Jones or Jabez
Lincoln and his wife, or Ben and Mary Humphries, or "Mr. and Mrs. Horace
Dunkelberg." These were the people of whom she talked when the neighbors
came in and when she was not talking of the Bayneses. I observed that
she always said "Mr. and Mrs. Horace Dunkelberg." They were the
conversational ornaments of our home. "As Mrs. Horace Dunkelberg says,"
or, "as I said to Mr. Horace Dunkelberg," were phrases calculated to
establish