Afterward Aunt Juanita spoke about it. "Now Selina, do be sensible, if, being Lavinia's child, you can. Shutting your eyes to the obvious is only patterning after the ostrich. It was perfectly patent those two absurd young men there at the station were taking each other's measure."
The morning after Selina's return from Eadston she spoke to her mother about her Aunt Juanita's proposal that she do some clerical work. "It'll be for only a few weeks, but if she thinks I can do it, Mamma, I'd like to try."
"Juanita has a wonderful head for just that sort of thing," said Mrs. Wistar, impeccable little lady, sitting by her window stitching on a petticoat for Selina, "hunting up lists and sorting people and poking figures and facts at them when she's sorted them. I suppose she knows what it's about. I must say I never have grasped it myself. And I do wish she'd mend her clothes. The only concession she's ever made to being a woman is curl-papers. I asked her once how it happened and she said no doubt Hecuba, wife of Priam, had some weakness. I asked her who Hecuba, wife of Priam, was, and she said she'd expected I'd ask just that. Still I'd like you to know your aunt better by being thrown with her. Juanita's a most excellent and high-minded person."
"She doesn't think as much of the rest of her sex," said Selina to this stoutly. Wasn't Mamma defending Aunt Juanita who had criticized _her_? "She says _you_ don't know the first thing about your affairs. What does she mean? What affairs?"
"I should consider it an insult to your father if I thought I had to know. I had five thousand dollars when I married, the same as she had. It's this she means. She's always asking me where it is. I've never sought to know." Mamma spoke virtuously, even proudly.
In the surprise of this knowledge of her mother's affluence, Selina lost her head. "Five thousand dollars, Mamma! What became of it?"
"The tone of your question sounds like your aunt Juanita," severely, "I've never asked."
Selina found herself suddenly turned stubborn. "Why didn't Papa tell you? Why should you have to ask?"
Auntie came into the conversation. They had forgotten her sitting over at the second window also stitching on a petticoat, also for Selina. It was the one Selina had started for herself. It was the first of May, and did they not, these two dear ladies, always endeavor to make Selina two around of everything in underclothes and thus replenish her stock, every April and May? Darling Auntie, who had acknowledged the meager satisfaction of a life given up to stitching underclothes and polishing brasses!