The Project Gutenberg EBook of Julia The Apostate, by Josephine Daskam

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Title: Julia The Apostate

Author: Josephine Daskam

Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23367]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JULIA THE APOSTATE ***

Produced by David Widger

JULIA THE APOSTATE

By Josephine Daskam

Copyright, 1903, by Charles Scribner's Sons

"You don't think it's too young for me, girls?"

"Young for you--_par exemple!_ I should say not," her niece replied,
perking the quivering aigrette still more obliquely upon her aunt's
head. Carolyn used _par exemple_ as a good cook uses onion--a hint of it
in everything. There were those who said that she interpolated it in the
Litany; but Carolyn, who was born Caroline and a Baptist, was too much
impressed by the liturgy of what she called The Church to insert even an
uncanonized comma.

"Now don't touch it, Aunt Julia, for it's deliciously chic, and if you
had your way you'd flatten it down right straight in the middle--you
know you would."

Miss Trueman pursed her lips quizzically.

"I've always thought, Carrie--_lyn_," she added hastily, as her niece
scowled, "that they put things askew to make 'em different--for a
change, as you might say. Now, if they're _never_ in the middle, it's
about as tiresome, isn't it?"

Elise, whose napkin-ring bore malignant witness to her loving aunt,
Eliza Judd, laughed irrepressibly: she had more sense of humor than her
sister. It was she who, though she had assisted in polishing the old
copper kettle subsequently utilized as a holder for the tongs and
shovel, had refused to consider the yet older wash-boiler in the light
of a possible coal-scuttle, greatly to the relief of her aunt, who
blushed persistently at any mention of the hearth.

She patted the older woman encouragingly.

"That's right, Aunt Ju-ju, argue it out!" she advised.

Miss Trueman winced. She had never accustomed herself to those senseless
monosyllables that parodied her name; nor could she understand the frame
of mind that found them preferable to the comfortable "Aunt Jule" of the
old days.

"Ju-ju!" Strips of unwholesome flesh-