For awhile,
however, all bade fair to progress favorably between the young people,
some letters even had been exchanged between them, when one day Miss
Hartney came sailing into the library with a covert light of triumph
in her little piercing eyes, with the announcement to your mother, her
father and myself, who were seated around the table with our different
occupations, that she was 'going off for a few days, to Aunt Liddy's,'
and wanted to know whether we had 'any messages to send?'
"The color rushed into your poor mother's cheeks. She bowed her head
very low over her papers and muttered.
"'Oh yes, give Aunt Liddy my fondest love and tell her I am making all
haste with the screen I have promised her. I shall send it to her in
less than three weeks,' she added, daring now to look up when her
agitation had subsided.
"'Perhaps you would rather take it up yourself, eh?'" said her aunt,
pinching her ears in malicious playfulness. 'I guess I know something
about this screen for Aunt Liddy, it is a screen in more ways than
one--ha-ha,' she exclaimed in taunting mockery, but still with an
effort to keep up a simpering pretence to good-humor.
"Your mother was afraid to say a word, her father had brought her up
to look upon this sister of his as a limb of a jealous law, that would
crush or annihilate her if she slighted or disrespected her in any
way. But the crimson spots came back into her cheeks, and she fell
into a sullen, indignant silence, that lasted long after her
contemptible relative had left us with her incisive good-byes.
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