"You speak as if we had set up the habit," I replied.
"Certainly I should be very glad if it were to become a habit.
But in that case I should feel a still greater scruple at
betraying a lady's confidence."
"Her confidence? Has she got confidence?"
"Here she is--she can tell you herself," I said; for Miss Tita
now appeared on the threshold of the old woman's parlor.
"Have you got confidence, Miss Tita? Your aunt wants very
much to know."
"Not in her, not in her!" the younger lady declared, shaking her
head with a dolefulness that was neither jocular not affected.
"I don't know what to do with her; she has fits of horrid imprudence.
She is so easily tired--and yet she has begun to roam--
to drag herself about the house." And she stood looking down
at her immemorial companion with a sort of helpless wonder,
as if all their years of familiarity had not made her perversities,
on occasion, any more easy to follow.
"I know what I'm about. I'm not losing my mind.
I daresay you would like to think so," said Miss Bordereau
with a cynical little sigh.
"I don't suppose you came out here yourself. Miss Tita must have had to lend
you a hand," I interposed with a pacifying intention.
"Oh, she insisted that we should push her; and when she insists!"
said Miss Tita in the same tone of apprehension; as if there were no
knowing what service that she disapproved of her aunt might force
her next to render.
"I have always got most things done I wanted, thank God!
The people I have lived with have humored me," the old
woman continued, speaking out of the gray ashes of her vanity.
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