e to,' about every hour, I had better wipe the
twins' noses, and wash the dirt often them, and light Aunt Dilsie's
phthisic pipe, and get things upstairs for Sallie and Miss Jasmine and
everybody when they are downstairs. I'm too busy, I am, to be so
religious. And I'm too hungry to talk any more about it." With which she
departed.

I sank on the side steps and laughed until a busy old bumble-bee came
down from a late honeysuckle blossom and buzzed around to see what it
was all about. Henrietta's statement of the case was a graphic and just
one. Sallie has got a tendril around Henrietta which grows by the day.
Poor tot, she does have a hard and hardening time--and how can I lecture
her for swearing?

With a train of thought started by Henrietta I sat at my solitary
breakfast in a deeply contemplative mood. Life was going to press hard
on Henrietta. And reared in the fossilized atmosphere of Widegables,
which tried to draw all its six separate feminine breaths as one with a
lone, supporting man, how was she to develop the biceps of strength of
mind and soul, as well as body, to meet the conditions she was likely
to have to meet? Still her coming tussle with Aunt Augusta would be a
tonic at least. I was just breaking a last muffin and beginning to smile
when I saw a delegation coming down the street and turning into my front
gate; I rose to meet it with distinction.

Aunt Augusta marched at the head and Nell and Caroline were on each side
of her, while Sallie and Mamie Hall brought up the rear, walking more
deliberately and each carrying a baby, comparing some sort of white tags
of sewing. Cousin Martha was crossing the Road in their wake with her
knitting bag and palm leaf fan.

One thing I am proud of having accomplished this summer is the
establishing of friendly relations with Aunt Augusta. I made up my mind
that she probably needed to have some of my affection ladled out to her
more than anybody in Glendale, and I worked on all the volatile fear and
resentment and dislike I had ever had for her all my life, and I have
succeeded in liquefying it into a genuine liking for the martial old
personality. If Aunt Augusta had been a man she would have probably led
a regiment up San Juan Hill, died in the trenches, and covered herself
and family with glory. She is the newest woman in the Harpeth Valley,
and though sixty years old, she is lineally Sallie Carruthers's own
granddaughter.

"Evelina," she began, as soon as s