“They had it all fixed up, inside and out,” said Aunt Maria.  “There wasn’t a room but was painted and papered, and a good many had to be plastered.  They did not get much new furniture, though.  I should have thought they’d wanted to.  All they’ve got is awful old.  But I heard George Ramsey say he wouldn’t swap one of those old mahogany pieces for the best new thing to be bought.  Well, everybody to their taste.  If I had had my house all fixed up that way, I should have wanted new furniture to correspond.”

“What is George Ramsey doing?” asked Maria, with a little, conscious blush of which she was ashamed.  Maria, all her life, would blush because people expected it of her.  She knew as plainly as if she had spoken, that her aunt Maria was considering suddenly the advantages of a possible match between herself and George Ramsey.  What Aunt Maria said immediately confirmed this opinion.  She spoke with a sort of chary praise of George.  Aunt Maria had in reality never liked the Ramseys; she considered that they felt above her, and for no good reason; still, she had an eye for the main chance.  It flashed swiftly across her mind that her niece was pretty, and George might lose his heart to her and marry her, and then Mrs. Amelia Ramsey might have to treat her like an equal and no longer hold her old, aristocratic head so high.

“Well,” said she, “I suppose George Ramsey is pretty smart.  They say he is.  I guess he favors his grandfather.  His father wasn’t any too bright, if he was a Ramsey.  George Ramsey, they say, worked his way through college, used to be bell-boy or waiter or something in a hotel summers, unbeknown to his mother.  Amelia Ramsey would have had a conniption fit if she had known that her precious boy was working out.  She used to talk as grand as you please about George’s being away on his vacation.  Maybe she did know, but if she did she never let on.  I don’t know as she let on even to herself.  Amelia Ramsey is one of the kind who can shut their eyes even when they look at themselves.  There never was a lookin’-glass made that could show Amelia Ramsey anything she didn’t want to see.  I never had any patience with her.  I believe in being proud if you’ve got anything to be proud of, but I don’t see any sense in it otherwise.  Anyhow, I guess George is doing pretty well.  A distant relation of his mother, an Allen, not a Ramsey, got a place in a bank for him, they say, and he gets good pay.  I heard it was three thousand a year, but I don’t believe it.  He ain’t much over twenty, and it ain’t likely.  I don’t know jest how old he is.  He’s some older than you.”

“He’s a good deal older than I,” said Maria, remembering sundry confidences with the tall, lanky boy over the garden fence.

“Well, I don’t know but he is,” said Aunt Maria, “but I don’t believe he gets three thousand a year, anyhow.”