This page has been validated.
SOLO
65

it much more merciful that she should cease to live. The news which he read on Dr. Wilcove's countenance made it again possible for the boy to think of Aunt Verona with a sense of ease. Henceforth, for ever and ever, though he should not see her again, she would be with him in spirit as the old Aunt Verona, the kind, quiet Aunt Verona who sat at his side when he did his lessons; who made hot scones for his supper and doughnut men and animals; who called out from the kitchen when he got the time wrong; the Aunt Verona who said pungent things about neighbours with whom she never communed; who broke into odd, serious smiles when he said amusing things; who had solemnly taught him the way to accept invitations and lift his hat; the Aunt Verona who understood his pride and emotional intemperance; the Aunt Verona to whom he could explain his alien ideas; who confirmed his faith in the validity of his own impressions and encouraged him to formulate them honestly; the Aunt Verona who set a daily example of mental playfulness; who had made him realize that there was a feminine attitude toward phenomena which differed from the masculine; the Aunt Verona who inquired what his teacher had said to him, what Miss Todd had worn at Flora Ashmill's strawberry social; the Aunt Verona who had been very important when she was younger and who might have continued to be important but for some unkind defeat; who had lived a life romantic and distinguished beyond the guessing capacities of Hale's Turning; the Aunt Verona who never overlooked his faults yet who never made fun of him nor took an unfair advantage; who reproved and corrected but never scolded; the Aunt Verona who—who collected texts. And the thought of those poor useless scraps of paper stuffed pell-mell into the cabinet on the dresser, that irrational but methodically compiled jumble, that painstakingly memorized but mad record of three or four hundred sermons that even the