Mary Stewart Cutting

“ Bromley went over and took the chair by Belle, to meet her "Hello, Benny Ben!" as of old.
"Well, how are you, Belle? I say, this seems good. You look as young as when I saw you last—let me see, that was at Uncle Ben's funeral."
"I'm not, though! I've got a boy of nineteen, and a girl of seventeen."
"Yes, I know."
"It's a shame that we none of us ever see each other any more unless somebody's dead. Aunt Kit kept us all together! I've heard of you and your family through her and Marthe; I understand your daughter is to be married soon." ”

“ Everything was all right; but that first glow of excitement and sympathy, mingled with the bewilderment and shock of Rill's engagement, had faded during the year into a half-irritated, even if affectionate, tolerance of the situation. Lately, however, this had been mixed with that sense of the looming prospect of the wedding of which Mr. Bromley had been hearing incessantly. Young Holman—they never abbreviated names in the Wotherspoon family—had been suddenly offered a position in the West, and it was natural that the young couple should want to be married and go out there together ”

“ We're going to get to the wedding, no matter what happens—that is, of course, if you mean to ask us."
"Oh, yes, indeed," said Ben hastily, with a craven sinking of the heart. He nerved himself for explanation. "But it will—er—er—it will be very quiet; we don't believe in having much fuss."
"That's so much better taste," said Cal approvingly. "I call all those big, gorgeous displays vulgar."
"Well, Uncle El, you old skate, is that you? How are you?" said Ben, turning away. "The girls and I have finished our little talk. Draw your chair back here." ”

“ It's awfully sweet of Holman to want Top for best man—he can borrow a coat, he thinks; but the two younger boys will have to be fitted out from head to foot; and Joe tore his best trousers on a nail last week. Alice has to have stockings and ribbons. Rill hasn't her suit yet, and I haven't a rag for myself. You can't appear in a dress that's been made five years if you're the mother of the bride—not that I care about myself at all! And you've got to have new shoes, Ben, whether there's a wedding or not! ”

“ And I feel just as if Aunt Kit knew it."
"I'm sure she does," said Belle. She hesitated, and then went on impulsively: "I'm going to see you and Jess, anyway, at your little Rill's wedding, no matter what happens, Ben, dear. Why should we wait for another funeral? As Uncle El says, the family will rally round you this time! My Rena wouldn't miss it for anything. Why are you looking around, have you lost something?" ”

“ Get Rill all she needs, and be sure and don't stint yourself, dear, out of the amount; but make it just a plain, old-fashioned wedding, Jess," he warned her. "There's all the more reason now for going carefully with what we have. My, I'll be glad when all this is over and we can go back to ordinary living again! Give everyone plenty to eat, that's the main thing; but make the rest just as simple as you can; that is, if a wedding ever can be simple!"
"Indeed I will, dear," she assured him eagerly. "I have been thinking—there are lots of things we don't really need, Alice's sash for instance ”

“ Rena, my girl, is helping me now; she takes my classes when I'm away. I was bound to get off to Aunt Kit's funeral—she always did one good, you know; I can't help feeling as if she were here just the same! I came on from Camden yesterday and stayed all night. But the fact is, Benjie, I'm just a little bothered about Ted, my boy, these days."
"What's the trouble?"
"It's hard bringing up a boy without his father—Ted's as good as he can be, and he is a fine-looking boy, too, if I do say it, but—he's restless." ”

“ Some of Us Are Married
THE PURVEYOR OF THE FUNDS IT SEEMS too bad that I can't go to Aunt Kit's funeral—the very last member of the old family!" From the paper he was reading, Ben Bromley looked up yearningly at his wife, who sat by the window in a short-sleeved, pink gingham frock, shelling peas with expert fingers. It was ten a.m. on a warm Sunday; nobody was going to church, but the two small boys and little Alice were at Sunday school; the sixteen-year-old Top was upstairs employed exhaustively in the sacred rite of cleaning his gun. There was a sense of peace and space and leisure. ”

“ When there are five and six in a family you can see how it brings it up before you know it, Ben; and you have to give them something to eat. Even if you cook all the chickens and make the salad yourself, it costs, and that's only the beginning. ”

“ Going to Aunt Kit's funeral?"
"Well, I intended to take it in when I left Danbury last evening to catch this train," said the other. "I got a letter Saturday from Hen Brown about the funeral; but I stuck it in my pocket and didn't read the rest of it till this morning. He says the only name mentioned in the will was Marthe's. Of course that's what Marthe has been playing for all these years."
"She deserves all she'll get," said Ben staunchly. "Besides, Aunt Kit didn't have so much, anyway. Waiter, you can bring me a couple of your best cigars." ”

“ Aunt Kit! She was pretty old, eighty-two; why, I remember her as long as I remember anything. She always gave me molasses cookies from the time when I was a little shaver and Father took me to see her. Nobody's cookies were as good as hers. She was always helping somebody—that terrible year after Father died—I don't know what we'd have done if it hadn't been for Aunt Kit ”

“ It seems if you ask one person you have to ask everybody else, or someone's feelings will be hurt. We thought it would all be so simple. Nothing takes much, you see; but everything takes something."
"Why in thunder do they want to be married now anyway? Why couldn't they wait until next year, when everything could be fixed up all right?"
"Ben! Don't be so silly. You know perfectly well that Rill wants to go out there with Holman. ”

“ Here comes Marthe now."
"Everything will be ready in a minute," said Marthe. She dropped down wearily in a seat by Ben, her thin face taking on a tinge of colour as she patted his hand.
"Aunt Kit would have been pleased as Punch that you came, Benjie. She thought a lot of you. She used to say that she was terribly fond of men, the same as all old women are; they have to live with their own kind so much.... The little Italian child has been at the door with a big bunch of wild flowers. Aunt Kit gave her a five-dollar gold piece last week, tied up in pink tissue paper ”

“ It's a mercy Boardman Skank didn't show up, Aunt Kit would have turned in her grave!"
In the bustle of farewells that followed, Ben found a chance for a word to the always smiling and speechless Hen. "Why don't you ask Marthe to marry you? She's a mighty fine woman." ”

“ I hate it when you make yourself look like a clown.... No, I don't care whether Rill has a wedding or not. I don't care what anybody else has; we'll manage! But you've got to go to that funeral! If you throw those bills again on the floor I'll tear them up into little pieces and burn them. Ben—Ben! ”

“ Only Aunt Kit's wheeled chair was empty.
The next moment he was shaking hands and being greeted warmly by each one of the group; the two high-nosed Spanner "girls," nearing sixty, but who didn't look it, dressed expensively in the height of the fashion; portly Uncle El and little deaf Aunt Petra; the smiling but always speechless Hen Brown, almost a relation by the friendship of years; young James and Francis Hartley, small and eager-eyed ”

“ I'll write you. You see, I'm ashamed to say that things—and people—get sort of crowded out the way I live, when one is trying to work up a business; but you must remember that I'm there just the same. ”

“ I don't believe we've seen you since Father's funeral."
"It's a shame, isn't it," said Ben heartily.
"Of course we know your time is very valuable—such a prominent man as you have become. How's Jessie and Rill? So Rill is to be married—she is so pretty. Cal and I ran across them both a couple of weeks ago, shopping. I suppose they told you. We want to know what Rill would like for a wedding present. I have some old silver candlesticks plated on copper that were her great-grandmother's—I thought she might like them."
"She'll be crazy over them," said Ben soberly. "You're too good." ”

“ He had lately got into one of the pockets of life where he could see nothing but his own affairs—nothing in the world really mattered now but getting results from the business—he couldn't afford to think of anything else until he "pulled out." ”

“ Marthe's voice trembled slightly, but she steadied it before she went on. "She made me put that little picture of her at sixteen—right sweet, isn't it?—on the table there, for that was the way she allowed she looked now. I've got to leave you and see to things in the kitchen with Mrs. Quinn; but I'll set the phonograph going first. You men smoke if you want to, for goodness' sake; she'd like it all the better." ”

“ This inopportune insistence on the funeral when you usually couldn't drag him to one! Men were so set about the things they wanted—it seemed as strange to her as it does to most wives, when a man passionately desires to do something "on his own." But she went up to him now and put her arm tenderly around him, while with the other hand she strove to force a couple of the bills into his tightly clenched fist.
"Oh, my goodness, if you're as crazy as that about your old funeral! Take this back again, and go. Ben! ”