[Cover Illustration] AUNT ANNE. _By Mrs. W. K. Clifford_, _Author of “Mrs. Keith’s Crime,” etc._ “As less the olden glow abides, And less the chillier heart aspires, With driftwood beached in past spring-tides We light our sullen fires.” JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. In Two Volumes. Vol. I. London: Richard Bentley & Son, Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen. 1892. (All rights reserved.) [Illustration] AUNT ANNE. CHAPTER I. Mr. and Mrs. Walter Hibbert had been married just four months when Aunt Anne first appeared on the scene. They were at Brighton, whither they had gone from Friday to Tuesday, so that Mr. Hibbert might get braced up after a hard spell of work. Besides doing his usual journalism, he had been helping a friend with a popular educational weekly, and altogether “had slaved quite wickedly,” so his wife said. But he had declared that, though he found matrimony, as far as he had gone, very delightful, it had to be paid for, especially at the beginning of its career, when it ran into furniture, linen, plate, and expensive presents to a dear little wife, though the expensiveness of the last he generously kept to himself. So it resulted in the visit to Brighton. They spent the happiest four days in the world there, and felt quite sad when Tuesday morning arrived. But they wisely did their best to forget that the evening train would take them back to London, and resolved that their last day should pass merrily. “Suppose we have a long drowsy morning on the pier,” she suggested; “nothing is nicer or more restful than to listen to the band and look down into the water. We needn’t see the horrid people—indeed, if we sit on one of the end seats and keep our faces turned seawards, we can forget that they even exist.” Mr. Hibbert solemnly considered the proposal. “The only drawback is the music, it makes so much noise—that’s the worst of music, it always does,” he said sadly. “Another thing is, that I cannot lie full length on the pier as I can on the beach.” “Very well, then we’ll go to the beach. The worst of the beach is, that we can’t look down into the water, as we can from the end of the pier.” “That’s true; and then there are lots of pretty girls on the pier, and I like to see them, for then I know that there are some left—for the other fellows,” he added nobly.