Julia The Apostate — Reading Companion

this the discussions were wont to cease.

To-day the apartment was swept and garnished for a social function long planned by the nieces. Carnations leaned from tall glass vases, intricate little cakes jostled carefully piled sandwiches, and a huge brass samovar, borrowed for the occasion, gave dignity to the small parlor. Miss Trueman had learned by now the unwritten law that prevented the various objects in the once proudly segregated “drawing-room set” from association with each other, and made no attempt to correct their intentional isolation. The samovar she refused utterly to meddle with, assuring them that she would as soon think of running a locomotive.

As the guests began to arrive Miss Trueman found herself regarding them even more critically than usual; an argumentative spirit rose in her, and her calm contradiction of Mrs. Ranger, who discussed with great subtlety the notable advantages--even from the artistic point of view--of the approaching spring when experienced in the city, in comparison with that be-rhymed season's vaunted country beauties, startled more than one person.

“Just because they're more delicate, just because you must look harder to discover them, just because you must get as much from a pot of hyacinths on the Avenue as from a whole field of primroses in the backwoods, you know,” she concluded, and the little circle nodded sagely and congratulated themselves on an unpublished paragraph.

“I don't agree with you, Mrs. Ranger,” said Aunt Ju-ju flatly, to the absolute amazement of her nieces and the tolerant amusement of the assembly. “I guess you haven't lived in the country much, or you wouldn't talk so. And primroses don't grow in fields here, anyway. If you could see my hyacinths and crocuses in round beds at home, you wouldn't mention those poor little stalks in the pots.”

Mrs. Ranger laughed, and directed her searching, level glance at the older woman, who combined in her comely, undisguised middle age something at once more matronly and more childish than the analytic authoress could ever find in her own mirror.

“Aha!” she cried, “then you are no friend of dear old Horace, after all, Miss Trueman! He and I, you see--”

The relation of these two urbanites was revealed no further, for a bustle in the little hall drew attention to a newcomer unknown not only to the guests but evidently to the hostesses, who rose, smiling uncertainly, as a portly, broad-shouldered man with iron-gray hair made his way through the group about the samovar.

“I'll have to introduce myself, I see,” he began, not precisely with what an exigent society calls ease of manner, but with a certain practical self-possession quite as effective.

“I didn't expect the girls to remember me, but I thought perhaps you might, Julia.”

Miss Trueman peered out from the shaded five-o'clock gloom so dear to Carolyn's soul.

“I don't seem--it's not--why, Cousin Lorando Bean, it's not you?”

“That's it,” he said heartily, “that's just exactly it. And he's mighty glad to see some of his relations again, I can tell you. And these are Carrie and Lizzie, I suppose. Well, well, fifteen years is a long time, even to an old fellow like me, and you girls were just beginning to be young ladies when I left Connecticut. How are you all?”

If this simple greeting came like a breath of her native air to Miss True-man, it cannot be said to have had a similar effect on her nieces. Courtesy prevented a full expression of their feelings, but they affected no undue delight at the presence of their new-found relative--whom they had very sincerely forgotten, along with many other details of a somewhat inartistic youth--and turned to their other guests with a frank relief when they had established him, with a cup of tea, a sandwich, and Aunt Julia, in the near-by dining-room.

“A third or fourth cousin, I believe, who has lived a long time in the West,” they explained. The company, some of whom doubtless possessed third or fourth cousins from the West, nodded comprehensively, and the interrupted function flowed smoothly on again.

Cousin Lorando Bean balanced his cup on his broad palm and gazed about appreciatively at the casts and water-colors on the dull green walls.

“Very snug little quarters, these,” he volunteered, “but, do you know, Cousin Jule, I suppose it's all right for ladies, but I don't seem to breathe extra well in these little rooms, somehow! I've been in two or three of them like this, more or less, since I came to New York--people I used to know that I've been hunting up--and, by George, I began to feel as if I was getting red in the face, if you see what I mean.”