taking cucumbers and tomatoes from unexpected points of his person. "All out o' my little bit," he'd say in exemplary tones. He left a trail of vegetable produce in the most unusual places, on mantelboards, sideboards, the tops of pictures. Heavens! how the sudden unexpected tomato could annoy me! . . .
It did much to widen our estrangement that Marion and my aunt failed to make friends, became, by a sort of instinct, antagonistic.
My aunt, to begin with, called rather frequently, for she was really anxious to know Marion. At first she would arrive like a whirlwind and pervade the house with an atmosphere of hello! She dressed already with that cheerfully extravagant abandon that signalized her accession to fortune, and dressed her best for these visits. She wanted to play the mother to me, I fancy, to tell Marion occult secrets about the way I wore out my boots and how I never could think to put on thicker things in cold weather. But Marion received her with that defensive suspiciousness of the shy person, thinking only of the possible criticism of herself; and my aunt, perceiving this, became nervous and slangy. . . .
"She says such queer things," said Marion once, discussing her. "But I suppose it's witty."
"Yes," I said; "it is witty."
"If I said things like she does"
The queer things my aunt said were nothing to the queer things she didn't say. I remember her in our drawing-room one day, and how she cocked her eye—it's the only expression—at the India-rubber plant in a Doulton-ware pot which Marion had placed on the corner of the piano.
She was on the very verge of speech. Then suddenly
