"
Isabel laughed. "I know it," she answered brightly. "And if there's
anything I can say to make you and aunt Mary Ellen come over here"--
Aunt Luceba shook her head ponderously, and clucked at the horse.
"Fur's I'm concerned, it's settled now. I'd come, an' be glad. But
there's Mary Ellen! Go 'long!" She went jangling away along the country
road to the music of old-fashioned bells.
Isabel ran into the house, and, with one look at the chest, set about
preparing her supper. She was enjoying her life of perfect freedom with
a kind of bravado, inasmuch as it seemed an innocent delight of which
nobody approved. If the two aunts would come to live with her, so much,
the better; but since they refused, she scorned the descent to any
domestic expedient. Indeed, she would have been glad to sleep, as well
as to eat, in the lonely house; but to that her sister would never
consent, and though she had compromised by going to Sadie's for the
night, she always returned before breakfast. She put up a leaf of the
table standing by the wall, and arranged her simple supper there,
uttering aloud as she did so fragments of her lesson, or dramatic
sentences which had caught her fancy in reading or in speech. Finally,
as she was dipping her cream toast, she caught herself saying, over and
over, "My soul!" in the tremulous tone her aunt had used at that moment
of warm emotion.
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