Aunts -- Fiction; Children -- Fiction; Sisters-in-law -- Fiction
Betty evidently pictured the dark passages of the whale to be what
Haines used to be before electric light was installed. The whale, like
a house, must be modernized to meet the requirements of the day. When
Betty starts asking questions, she mercifully quickly follows one with
another, and does not wait for answers. The interior economy of the
whale suggested various trains of thought, and she went skipping along
beside me, or rather in front of me, propounding the most astounding
theories. I was quite glad when Mr. Dudley and Hugh caught us up.
"You did come along fast, old man," said Mr. Dudley.
"It wasn't me, it was you," panted Hugh. "It truthfully was, Aunt
Woggles, and he wasn't going to church at all till I told him you were
going. I'm awfully out of breath because he wanted to catch you up, so
it wasn't me all the time."
I was sorry Hugh and Mr. Dudley had caught us up.
Mr. Dudley murmured something about "Young ruffian," and I felt it my
duty as well as my pleasure to tell Hugh not to talk so much.
"I 'sect you want to sit next my Aunt Woggles, don't you?" said Hugh
to Mr. Dudley; "but you can't, because I said, 'bags I sit next Aunt
Woggles in church' before she came to stay, ever so long before,
before two Christmases ago, I should think it was, or nearly before two
Christmases ago!"
Betty's grasp on my hand tightened, and I returned it with a reassuring
pressure, as much as to say, "There are two sides to every aunt in
church, dear Betty; it is a comfort to know that."
"I may sit next you, mayn't I?"
"Yes, Betty," I said.
"You are very rosy, Aunt Woggles," said Hugh. "Do you love my Aunt
Woggles?" he continued, dancing backward in front of Mr. Dudley.
"Of course he does," I said boldly, taking the bull by the horns.
"Mr. Dudley loves even his enemies, especially on Sundays."
Hugh looked puzzled, and pondered. Before he had come to any definite
conclusion as to how this affected Mr. Dudley's feelings towards me, we
reached the lichgate, where we found the rest of the party awaiting us.
We all separated: Diana took Betty, who gazed at me mournfully, but
was too loyal to her mother to say anything; Hugh gave a series of
triumphant jumps, which added pain to Betty's already disappointed
expression.
In church I found myself allotted to what we call the overflow pew,
which is at right angles to the family pews and in full view of them.
It is the children's favorite pew only, I imagine, because they don't
always sit there. Hugh sat very close to me, and kept on giving little
wriggles and gazing up at me, then at Mr. Dudley, and snuggling closer
to me as if to emphasize the superiority of his position over that of
Mr. Dudley.
"Hugh," I whispered, "you must behave."
"He didn't sit next you, after all," he whispered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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