"Yes, indeed. I hate to be a saint all the time. There ought to be vacations. Instead of suffering from a bad conscience, I suffer from a good one."
"It was no merit of yours, aunt," put in Harry. "Who was ever more agreeable and lovable than Malbone last night?"
"Lovable!" burst out Aunt Jane, who never could be managed or manipulated by anybody but Kate, and who often rebelled against Harry's blunt assertions. "Of course he is lovable, and that is why I dislike him. His father was so before him. That is the worst of it. I never in my life saw any harm done by a villain; I wish I could. All the mischief in this world is done by lovable people. Thank Heaven, nobody ever dared to call me lovable!"
"I should like to see any one dare call you anything else,--you dear, old, soft-hearted darling!" interposed Kate.
"But, aunt," persisted Harry, "if you only knew what the mass of young men are--"
"Don't I?" interrupted the impetuous lady. "What is there that is not known to any woman who has common sense, and eyes enough to look out of a window?"
"If you only knew," Harry went on, "how superior Phil Malbone is, in his whole tone, to any fellow of my acquaintance."
"Lord help the rest!" she answered. "Philip has a sort of refinement instead of principles, and a heart instead of a conscience,--just heart enough to keep himself happy and everybody else miserable."
"Do you mean to say," asked the obstinate Hal, "that there is no difference between refinement and coarseness?"
"Yes, there is," she said.
"Well, which is best?"
"Coarseness is safer by a great deal," said Aunt Jane, "in the hands of a man like Philip. What harm can that swearing coachman do, I should like to know, in the street yonder? To be sure it is very unpleasant, and I wonder they let people swear so, except, perhaps, in waste places outside the town; but that is his way of expressing himself, and he only frightens people, after all."
"Which Philip does not," said Hal.
"Exactly. That is the danger. He frightens nobody, not even himself, when he ought to wear a label round his neck marked 'Dangerous,' such as they have at other places where it is slippery and brittle. When he is here, I keep saying to myself, 'Too smooth, too smooth!'"
"Aunt Jane," said Harry, gravely, "I know Malbone very well, and I never knew any man whom it was more unjust to call a hypocrite."
"Did I say he was a hypocrite?" she cried. "He is worse than that; at least, more really dangerous. It is these high-strung sentimentalists who do all the mischief; who play on their own lovely emotions, forsooth, till they wear out those fine fiddlestrings, and then have nothing left but the flesh and the D. Don't tell me!"
"Do stop, auntie," interposed Kate, quite alarmed, "you are really worse than a coachman. You are growing very profane indeed."
"I have a much harder time than any coachman, Kate," retorted the injured lady. "Nobody tries to stop him, and you are always hushing me up."
"Hushing you up, darling?" said Kate. "When we only spoil you by praising and quoting everything you say."
"Only when it amuses you," said Aunt Jane. "So long as I sit and cry my eyes out over a book, you all love me, and when I talk nonsense, you are ready to encourage it; but when I begin to utter a little sense, you all want to silence me, or else run out of the room! Yesterday I read about a newspaper somewhere, called the 'Daily Evening Voice'; I wish you would allow me a daily morning voice."
"Do not interfere, Kate," said Hal. "Aunt Jane and I only wish to understand each other."
"I am sure we don't," said Aunt Jane; "I have no desire to understand you, and you never will understand me till you comprehend Philip."
"Let us agree on one thing," Harry said. "Surely, aunt, you know how he loves Hope?"
Aunt Jane approached a degree nearer the equator, and said, gently, "I fear I do."
"Fear?"
"Yes, fear. That is just what troubles me. I know precisely how he loves her. Il se laisse aimer. Philip likes to be petted, as much as any cat, and, while he will purr, Hope is happy. Very few men accept idolatry with any degree of grace, but he unfortunately does."
"Unfortunately?" remonstrated Hal, as far as ever from being satisfied. "This is really too bad. You never will do him any justice."
"Ah?" said Aunt Jane, chilling again, "I thought I did. I observe he is very much afraid of me, and there seems to be no other reason."
"The real trouble is," said Harry, after a pause, "that you doubt his constancy."
"What do you call constancy?" said she. "Kissing a woman's picture ten years after a man has broken her heart? Philip Malbone has that kind of constancy, and so had his father before him."
This was too much for Harry, who was ****** for the door in indignation, when little Ruth came in with Aunt Jane's luncheon, and that lady was soon absorbed in the hopeless task of keeping her handmaiden's pretty blue and white gingham sleeve out of the butter-plate.
