Timothy Crump's Ward: A Story of American Life. Alger Horatio Jr.

time past, and I expect I’m in a consumption.”

      “You make too much of a little thing, Rachel,” said the cooper. “I don’t think Jack meant anything.”

      “I’m sure, what I said was complimentary,” said Jack.

      Rachel shook her head incredulously.

      “Yes it was. Ask Ida. Why won’t you draw Aunt Rachel, Ida? I think she’d make a capital picture.”

      “So I will,” said Ida, hesitatingly, “if she will let me.”

      “Now, Aunt Rachel, there’s a chance for you,” said Jack. “I advise you to improve it. When it’s finished, it can be hung up at the Art Rooms, and who knows but you may secure a husband by it?”

      “I wouldn’t marry,” said his aunt, firmly compressing her lips, “not if anybody’d go down on their knees to me.”

      “Now I am sure, Aunt Rachel, that’s cruel in you.”

      “There ain’t any man that I’d trust my happiness to.”

      “She hasn’t any to trust,” observed Jack, sotto voce.

      “They’re all deceivers,” pursued Rachel, “the best of ‘em. You can’t believe what one of ‘em says. It would be a great deal better if people never married at all.”

      “Then where would the world be a hundred years hence?” suggested her nephew.

      “Come to an end, most likely,” said Aunt Rachel; “and I don’t know but that would be the best thing. It’s growing more and more wicked every day.”

      It will be seen that no great change has come over Miss Rachel Crump during the years that have intervened. She takes the same disheartening view of human nature and the world’s prospects, as ever. Nevertheless, her own hold upon the world seems as strong as ever. Her appetite continues remarkably good, and although she frequently expresses herself to the effect that there is little use in living, probably she would be as unwilling to leave the world as any one. I am not sure that she does not derive as much enjoyment from her melancholy as other people from their cheerfulness. Unfortunately, her peculiar way of enjoying herself is calculated to have rather a depressing influence upon the spirits of those with whom she comes in contact—always excepting Jack, who has a lively sense of the ludicrous, and never enjoys himself better than in bantering his aunt.