Ev’leen Ann rose to the bait, speaking quickly with some heat:  “I guess ’Niram knows what’s right for him to do!  He can’t afford to marry when he can’t even keep up with the doctor’s bills and all.  He keeps the house himself, nights and mornings, and Mrs. Purdon is awful handy about taking care of herself, for all she’s bedridden.  That’s her way, you know.  She can’t bear to have folks do for her.  She’d die before she’d let anybody do anything for her that she could anyways do for herself!”

I sighed acquiescingly.  Mrs. Purdon’s fierce independence was a rock on which every attempt at sympathy or help shattered itself to atoms.  There seemed to be no other emotion left in her poor old work-worn shell of a body.  As I looked at Ev’leen Ann it seemed rather a hateful characteristic, and I remarked, “It seems to me it’s asking a good deal of ’Niram to spoil his life in order that his stepmother can go on pretending she’s independent.”

Ev’leen Ann explained hastily:  “Oh, ’Niram doesn’t tell her anything about—­She doesn’t know he would like to—­he don’t want she should be worried—­and, anyhow, as ’tis, he can’t earn enough to keep ahead of all the:  doctors cost.”

“But the right kind of a wife—­a good, competent girl—­could help out by earning something, too.”

Ev’leen Ann looked at me forlornly, with no surprise.  The idea was evidently not new to her.  “Yes, ma’am, he could.  But ’Niram says he ain’t the kind of man to let his wife go out working.”  Even while she drooped under the killing verdict of his pride she was loyal to his standards and uttered no complaint.  She went on, ’Niram wants Aunt Em’line to have things the way she wants ’em, as near as he can give ’em to her—­and it’s right she should.”

“Aunt Emeline?” I repeated, surprised at her absence of mind.  “You mean Mrs. Purdon, don’t you?”

Ev’leen Ann looked vexed at her slip, but she scorned to attempt any concealment.  She explained dryly, with the shy, stiff embarrassment our country people have in speaking of private affairs:  “Well, she is my Aunt Em’line, Mrs. Purdon is, though I don’t hardly ever call her that.  You see, Aunt Emma brought me up, and she and Aunt Em’line don’t have anything to do with each other.  They were twins, and when they were girls they got edgeways over ’Niram’s father, when ’Niram was a baby and his father was a young widower and come courting.  Then Aunt Em’line married him, and Aunt Emma never spoke to her afterward.”

Occasionally, in walking unsuspectingly along one of our leafy lanes, some such fiery geyser of ancient heat uprears itself in a boiling column.  I never get used to it, and started back now.

“Why, I never heard of that before, and I’ve known your Aunt Emma and Mrs. Purdon for years!”

“Well, they’re pretty old now,” said Ev’leen Ann listlessly, with the natural indifference of self-centered youth to the bygone tragedies of the preceding generation.