an arrow, and they said she was ninety for over thirty years, which
of course was impossible, even if she had wished it, which I doubt, for
there is the well-known Bible age of threescore years and ten, and to
have exceeded it to _that_ extent would have been irreverent. She was
poor Eddie Thorne's aunt, the sister of his mother, a Duero and a
tremendous one, dyed in ancestors to the core; every one was afraid of
her but Garda, and Garda she took complete charge of as long as she
lived, though Mistress Thorne did what she could on the outskirts--_not_
much, I fancy, for the Old Madam declared that the child was a true
Duero and should be brought up as one, which seemed to mean principally
that she should swing in the hammock, and not learn verbs. I _think_
Mistress Thorne began to teach Garda verbs the day after the funeral; at
least when I went down there to pay a visit of condolence I found her
with a grammar in her hand, and a good deal of cheerfulness under the
circumstances--a good deal! The first Edgar Thorne, the one who came out
from England, is said to have been a man of a good deal of force of
character, for he kept a coach and four, and at that early day, on these
pine-barrens, it almost seemed as if he must have created them by magic,
which makes one think of Cinderella and her rats, doesn't it? And
indeed, in this case, the horses did turn into rats, as one may say,
before their very eyes; the poor Thornes have no horses _now_" said the
kind-hearted lady, pausing to shake her head sympathetically, and then
speeding on again. "They say that rats desert a sinking ship--though I
have always wondered how, since ships are not apt to sink at the piers,
are they?--and I never heard that rats could make rafts, though
squirrels can, they say--a bit of plank with their tails put up as a
sail, though of course rats' tails would never do for that, they are so
thin; but if rats _do_ desert their ship, Mistress Thorne will _never_
desert hers, she will keep the Thorne colors flying to the last, and go
down, if down she must, with the silent courage of the Spartan
boy--although it was a fox he had gnawing him, wasn't it? and not a rat;
but it makes no difference, it's the principle that's important, not the
illustration. Garda's name is really Edgarda, Edgarda after all the
Thornes, who, it seems, have been Edgars and Edgardas for centuries,
which I should think must have been very inconvenient, for, just to
mention one th