H. G. Duryée

“ Within its familiar narrowness, Josephine hesitated and fingered her cloak-buttons.
“I think your Aunt Bessie”—it was very slow speech for Josephine—“‘is ever so nice and knows a lot.”
“Qh!” bubbled Clarabel, joyously, “I do love the color of your mittens! Don’t you—don’t you”—she finished with a rush—“want to let me wear them home and you wear my gloves?” ”

“ The gloves were sent by Clarabel’s aunt, who was young and pretty and taught school in a large city; and they came done up in white tissue-paper inside a box with gilt trimming around the edges and a picture on the center of the cover. Taken out of the paper, they revealed all their alluring qualities. They were of a beautiful glossy brown kid with soft woolly linings and real fur around the wrists, and they fastened with bright gilded clasp: With them was a note which said
For Clarabel, with love from her Aunt Bessie. Not to
be kept for Sundays, but worn every day. ”

“ And Clarabel walked nearer the fence.
Josephine was hard put to it—Clarabel’s manner had become so superior.
“I don’t think your Aunt Bessie knows everything, even if she does teach school in a big city. My mother says she ’s too young to—”
What she was too young to do was not allowed to be explained; for Clarabel, with a color in her face that rivaled Josephine’s mittens, had faced her.
“My Aunt Bessie ’s lovely, and I won't listen to another word against her, not another one—so there!” ”