Aunt Sophia

“ Aunt Sophia with all her aggravatingness is very kind-hearted, and she is fond of us in a way. She might buy something of us, and when we grow rich we could buy it back again.”
“When we do!” said Katherine, with fine sarcasm. “All I can say is that if Aunt Sophia is to be applied to, I shall have nothing to do with it. Victoria can run the affair herself.”
“Very well,” returned Victoria, “if Honor is p. 123willing, I will. I will go to town to-morrow, and see Aunt Sophia. I only wish Mr. Abbott were at home, but he said his business would keep him away two weeks. Shall I go, Honor?” ”

“ It was clear that no dependence was to be placed on any of the creatures. Aunt Sophia was perfectly right. She thought of Aunt Sophia because that lady's voice—clear, slightly nasal and authoritative—was now to be heard dominating the slight buzz in the other room. ”

“ I am not the sort of girl you think me. However grand and stately and like a lady Aunt Sophia is—and compared to you and me, Nancy, she is very stately and very grand and very noble—I would not give you up. Aunt Sophy is a lady with a great brave heart, and her ideas are up-in-the-air ideas, and she doesn’t know anything about mean and low and vulgar things. I’d have clung to you, Nancy, and always owned you as my friend, even if Aunt Sophy had taken me into good society. Yes, I’d have stuck to you whatever happened; but now”—Pauline pressed her hand to her heart—“everything is altered. ”

“ Wentworth Ward of Boston and a strong gust of wind from the northeast.
“Why, Aunt Sophia!” exclaimed Honor, rising slowly from her sofa, which was in full view of the hall. “Is it really you?”
“It is really I,” replied her aunt; “and who else should it be, or why should it not be I? How do you all do? Honor, what is the matter that you are lying down at this hour of the day? Victoria, take my waterproof to the kitchen to be dried, if you please. Katherine, your hand, while I take off my overshoes! Sophia, come here, child, and give me a kiss! You smell of flour paste and are very sticky. ”

“ You tell me things when we are out walking, and then I have to answer, but I won’t if you’ll only let me go.”
“I really think you ought to stay at home this afternoon, Sophy,” interposed Honor. “You know Aunt Sophia is coming, and she will be disappointed if her namesake isn’t here to receive her.”
“I wish I hadn’t been named after her,” remarked Sophy, with an aggrieved air. “It’s an awful bother. When you’re named for people you always have to do things you don’t want to. Now there’s Peter can go to the woods this afternoon. He couldn’t if he was named for Aunt Sophia.” ”

“ He lighted his cigar with a look of relief, put it in his mouth, and sat back in his chair.
"Don't let your Aunt Sophia go and make a fool of you. She is a very good business woman, but you know she is not exactly—Solomon, and she is stark mad about titles. When you marry, marry a man."
"Mr. Canter, for example?" laughed the girl. "He is Aunt Sophia's second choice. She is always talking about his money."
"She is always talking about somebody's money, generally her own. But before I'd let that fellow have you I'd kill him with my own hand. He's the worst young man I know. ”

“ In which is related what passed between Sophia and her aunt. Sophia was in her chamber, reading, when her aunt came in. The moment she saw Mrs Western, she shut the book with so much eagerness, that the good lady could not forbear asking her, What book that was which she seemed so much afraid of showing? "Upon my word, madam," answered Sophia, "it is a book which I am neither ashamed nor afraid to own I have read. It is the production of a young lady of fashion, whose good understanding, I think, doth honour to her sex, and whose good heart is an honour to human nature." ”

“ Do you know I think it is almost a relief to Aunt Sophia that she isn’t obliged to have us there, after all. We should interfere dreadfully with her regular ways, even if she did turn us to account, with her writing and her dusting, and I also think she is very curious to see what we do, and how we come out. She is already looking forward, I plainly see, to the time, when she can prove that she knows more than anybody else, and that we are all dismal failures. For that reason, girls, if for nothing else, we must prove that we are not. ”

“ Aunt Harriet deemed that Sophia was looking pale. As the days passed, Sophia’s pallor was emphasized by Aunt Harriet until it developed into an article of faith, to which you were compelled to subscribe on pain of excommunication. Then dawned the day when Aunt Harriet said, staring at Sophia as an affectionate aunt may: “That child would do with a change.” And then there dawned another day when Aunt Harriet, staring at Sophia compassionately, as a devoted aunt may, said: “It’s a pity that child can’t have a change.” And Mrs. Baines also stared—and said: “It is.” ”

“ Don’t you think it was rather disagreeable for Aunt Sophia to say that? And whom do you suppose she meant, Honor?”
“Mr. Madison, of course.”
Honor’s voice was so peculiar that Victoria glanced at her sharply, but it was too dark in the room for her to see her face very clearly.
“Yes, Mr. Madison; but I don’t see how you happened to guess it so quickly.”
“Chiefly because there is no one else whom Aunt Sophia could possibly mean. There isn’t another man in the neighborhood.”
“But, Honor, have you noticed anything? Do you think that Katherine—well, that she cares for him? ”

“ But we like our poverty and our rough ways and our freedom, and we—we don’t want you, Aunt Sophia.”
“Nevertheless you will have to put up with me,” said Miss Tredgold. “And now, to start matters, please tell me exactly how you spend your day.”
“Our life is not yours, Aunt Sophia. It would not interest you to know how we spend our day.”
“To-morrow, Verena, when the life of rule succeeds the life of misrule, I should take umbrage at your remark, but to-night I take no umbrage. I but repeat my question.”
“And I will tell you,” said Pauline in her brisk voice. 25 “We get up just when we like. ”

“ He passed his cup. "I am glad to see you, Aunt Sophia, and surprised," he ended with emphasis.
Lady Sophia put up her lorgnette again. "One is always surprised to find virtue in unexpected places," she remarked coolly. "I plagiarise that from Molière, my dear. Yes, I am virtuous coming over into these wilds on a hot day, and I want the reward of my virtue."
"What reward do you want?" asked Prelice gruffly.
"The right to look after this dear girl." Lady Sophia patted Mona's arm. "I propose that she shall come abroad with me for a few months. ”

“ And somehow, by the time these matters were accomplished, it was tacitly understood that Sophia should accompany her kind aunt into the bracing moorland air of Axe. No smoke at Axe! No stuffiness at Axe! The spacious existence of a wealthy widow in a residential town with a low death-rate and famous scenery! "Have you packed your box, Sophia?" No, she had not. "Well, I will come and help you."
Impossible to bear up against the momentum of a massive body like Aunt Harriet's! ”

“ My female relatives looked significantly at one another.
"What did I tell you, Sophia?" said Aunt Jane in a tone of subdued triumph.
"Yes, sister, you were right," sighed Sophia, shaking her head. "Poor young man. I thought myself he loved Olivia." ”

“ How rich, since he loved her thus, should be his reward! How happy was she in this planning of the supreme moment of his joy! So, with the touch of the rector’s fatherly 369hand upon her brow, and aunt Sophia’s last tear-bedewed kiss upon her cheek; with her familiar old grey cloak wrapped round her wedding finery, and the little bunch from the Herb-Garden (Barnaby’s quaint offering) sweet upon her breast, she passed forth from the little autumnal orchard into the vast green spaces of the park. Close against David she pressed, leaning upon him, walking in thought-laden silence. ”

“ Not less blind to the tears, or less deaf to every entreaty of Sophia was the politic aunt, nor less determined was she to deliver over the trembling maid into the arms of the gaoler Blifil. She answered with great impetuosity, "So far, madam, from your being concerned alone, your concern is the least, or surely the least important. It is the honour of your family which is concerned in this alliance; you are only the instrument. ”

“ Their father, William Gill, had died before they were thirty, and now in their late middle life had come the death of the aunt to whom they had never spoken, although they had often seen her, who had lived in solitary state in the old Ackley mansion until she was more than eighty. There had been no will, and they were the only heirs with the exception of young Flora Scott, the daughter of the dead sister.
Sophia and Amanda thought directly of Flora when they knew of the inheritance.
"It will be a splendid thing for her; she will have enough to live on when we are gone," Sophia said. ”

“ You won't confess that she hath acted the part of the vilest sister in the world?"
"Upon my word, sir," cries Sophia, "I must belie my heart wickedly if I did. I know my aunt and you differ very much in your ways of thinking; but I have heard her a thousand times express the greatest affection for you; and I am convinced, so far from her being the worst sister in the world, there are very few who love a brother better."
"The English of all which is," answered the squire, "that I am in the wrong. Ay, certainly. Ay, to be sure the woman is in the right, and the man in the wrong always." ”

“ Are you going to meekly give in and do just what Aunt Sophia says, after all? I should think you would have more spirit. I—I would rather do anything than that. Scrubbing floors would be better than dusting Aunt Sophia’s ugly china, and writing her endless notes about stupid meetings. Really, Honor, I am surprised that you can sit there and calmly say you are willing to do it!”
“I didn’t say that I was willing,” said Honor; “and, Katherine, you know I am not. And, as for being calm—but what is the use of discussing that? We have got to live, and we have no money ”

“ I ought to have been back at school, but Uncle Dick would not hear of my going, and he seemed to have such influence over my aunt that his word was quite law.
“No, Sophy, I have not half done with him,” he said one evening. “I don’t want to flatter the boy, but he is very valuable to me. I could easily get a clerk or copyist to make out my lists and help me select and rearrange my specimens; but he would do it mechanically. Nat takes an interest in what he is doing, and is a naturalist at heart.”
“But he ought to be going on with his studies,” said Aunt Sophia. ”

“ It is quite absurd for you to become so excited. There is another question that I wish to speak about to one of you, but I will wait until I see Honor. She is the proper one.”
p. 265“Won’t I do, Aunt Sophia?”
Victoria was sorry that she had allowed her excitement to run away with her. If it had been any one but Roger Madison whom her aunt had suggested as a possible husband for Katherine, she could have borne it better, but try as she would, and much as she really liked the young man, she could not overcome the feeling that she had about him in regard to the sale of the etchings. ”

“ To be sure, madam, I am not blind—and certainly, if it be a fault to see all human perfections assembled together—but is it possible my father and you, madam, can see with my eyes?” “I tell you,” answered the aunt, “we do entirely approve; and this very afternoon your father hath appointed for you to receive your lover.” “My father, this afternoon!” cries Sophia, with the blood starting from her face.—“Yes, child,” said the aunt, “this afternoon. You know the impetuosity of my brother's temper. ”

“ Aunt Sophia in her myrtle-green levantine, seated at the marble table in the front parlour, holding in her hand an elegant book—for instance, her beautiful copy of the Pleasures of Hope. Caroline and I will wear our new scarlet Canton crapes with the satin trimming, and our coral ornaments."
"No, no," rejoined Caroline; "we resemble each other so much that, if we are dressed alike, Colonel Forrester will find too great a sameness in us. Do you wear your scarlet crape, and I will put on my white muslin with the six narrow flounces headed with insertion. ”

“ It is impossible! sure, Sophia, you must invent this to raise my indignation against him.” “I hope, madam,” said Sophia, “you have too good an opinion of me to imagine me capable of telling an untruth. Upon my soul it is true.” “I should have stabbed him to the heart, had I been present,” returned the aunt. “Yet surely he could have no dishonourable design; it is impossible! he durst not: besides, his proposals shew he hath not; for they are not only honourable, but generous. I don't know; the age allows too great freedoms. ”

“ Lady Sophia snapped, tartly: "I shall do nothing of the sort."
"Oh, very well," he assented, "you will do nothing of the sort. Anything for a quiet life, even agreement with the improbable."
His aunt grasped her whip dangerously. "How exasperating you are!"
"I was just thinking the same about you," confessed Prelice, good-humouredly; "it is so disagreeable for a late riser to be reminded of the time." And having folded his napkin, he lighted a cigarette.
"How long is this going on?" demanded Lady Sophia fiercely. His imperturbability made her long to shake him thoroughly. ”