You might load that poor soul with crown jewels and she would make
them look as if she had bought them at a department store for
ninety-eight cents. And the way she keeps her house must be maddening,
I should think, to a brilliant man. Fancy the books on the table being
all arranged with the large ones under the small ones in perfectly even
piles! I am sure that he has his meals on time, and I am equally sure
that the principal dishes are preserves and hot biscuits and cake. That
sort of diet simply shows forth in Mrs. Temple and her children. I am
sure that his socks are always mended, but I know that he always wipes
his feet before he enters the house, that it has become a matter of
conscience with him; and those exactions are to me pathetic. These
reflections are uncommonly like the popular conception as to how an
old-maid aunt should reflect, had she not ceased to exist. Sometimes I
wish she were still existing and that I carried out her character to
the full. I am not at all sure but she, as she once was, coming here,
would not have brought more happiness than I have. I must say I thought
so when I saw poor Harry Goward turn so pale when he first saw me after
my arrival. Why, in the name of common-sense, Ada, my sister-in-law,
when she wrote to me at the Pollards', announcing Peggy's engagement,
could not have mentioned who the man was, I cannot see.
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