ousin, and there alights a butterfly of the tropics, what
hospitality can you offer? But no sense of embarrassment ever came near
Malbone, especially with the children to swarm over him and claim him
for their own. Moreover, little Helen got in the first remark in the way
of serious conversation.

"Let me tell him something!" said the child. "Philip! that doll of mine
that you used to know, only think! she was sick and died last summer,
and went into the rag-bag. And the other split down the back, so there
was an end of her."

Polar ice would have been thawed by this reopening of communication.
Philip soon had the little maid on his shoulder,--the natural throne of
all children,--and they went in together to greet Aunt Jane.

Aunt Jane was the head of the house,--a lady who had spent more than
fifty years in educating her brains and battling with her ailments. She
had received from her parents a considerable inheritance in the way of
whims, and had nursed it up into a handsome fortune. Being one of
the most impulsive of human beings, she was naturally one of the most
entertaining; and behind all her eccentricities there was a fund of the
soundest sense and the tenderest affection. She had seen much and varied
society, had been greatly admired in her youth, but had chosen to remain
unmarried. Obliged by her physical condition to make herself the first
object, she was saved from utter selfishness by sympathies as democratic
as her personal habits were exclusive. Unexpected and commonly fantastic
in her doings, often dismayed by small difficulties, but never by large
ones, she sagaciously administered the affairs of all those around
her,--planned their dinners and their marriages, fought out their
bargains and their feuds.

She hated everything irresolute or vague; people might play at
cat's-cradle or study Spinoza, just as they pleased; but, whatever
they did, they must give their minds to it. She kept house from an
easy-chair, and ruled her dependants with severity tempered by wit, and
by the very sweetest voice in which reproof was ever uttered. She never
praised them, but if they did anything particularly well, rebuked them
retrospectively, asking why they had never done it well before? But she
treated them munificently, made all manner of plans for their comfort,
and they all thought her the wisest and wittiest of the human race. So
did the youths and maidens of her large circle; they all came to see
her, and she