“Very! Mary is a nice, grateful, respectful, loving niece, and I shan’t forget her, she may depend on that,” and Aunt Kipp laughed grimly.
“May she? well, that’s jolly now. She was afraid you wouldn’t give her the money; so I’ll tell her it’s all right;” and innocent Toady nodded approvingly.
“Oh, she expects some of my money, does she?”
“Course she does; ain’t you always saying you’ll remember us in your will, because father was your favorite nephew, and all that? I’ll tell you a secret, if you won’t let Polly know I spoke first. You’ll find it out to-night, for you’d see Van and she were sweethearts in a minute.”
“Sweethearts?” cried Aunt Kipp, turning red in the face.
“Yes’m. Van settled it last week, and Polly’s been so happy ever since. Mother likes it, and _I_ like it, for I’m fond of Van, though I do call him Baa-baa, because he looks like a sheep. We all like it, and we’d all say so, if we were not afraid of you. Mother and Polly, I mean; of course we men don’t mind, but we don’t want a fuss. You won’t make one, will you, now?”
Anything more expressive of brotherly good-will, persuasive frankness, and a placid consciousness of having “fixed it,” than Toady’s dirty little face, it would be hard to find. Aunt Kipp eyed him so fiercely that even before she spoke a dim suspicion that something was wrong began to dawn on his too-confiding soul.
“_I_ don’t like it, and I’ll put a stop to it. I won’t have any ridiculous baa-baas in my family. If Mary counts on my money to begin housekeeping with, she’ll find herself mistaken; for not one penny shall she have, married or single, and you may tell her so.”
Toady was so taken aback by this explosion that he let go his shoe-strings, fell over with a crash, and lay flat, with shovel and tongs spread upon him like a pall. In rushed Mrs. Snow and Polly, to find the boy’s spirits quite quenched, for once, and Aunt Kipp in a towering passion. It all came out in one overwhelming flood of words, and Toady fled from the storm to wander round the house, a prey to the deepest remorse. The meekness of that boy at dinner-time was so angelic that Mrs. Snow would have feared speedy translation for him, if she had not been very angry. Polly’s red eyes, and Aunt Kipp’s griffinesque expression of countenance, weighed upon his soul so heavily, that even roly-poly pudding failed to assuage his trouble, and, taking his mother into the china-closet, he anxiously inquired “if it was all up with Polly?”