liver and lack of exercise—­(poor dear mother used to say that the difference between the liver of a lady and that of another person, was that one required no exercise and the other did)—­but Kesiah, who is the best creature in the world, is very eccentric in some ways, and she imagines that her health suffers when she is kept in the house for several years.  Once she got into a temper and walked a mile or two on the road, but when she returned I was in such a state of nervousness that she promised me never to leave the lawn again unless a gentleman was with her.”

“What an angel you must be to have suffered so much and complained so little!” he exclaimed with fervour, kissing her hand.

Her eyes, which reminded him of dying violets, drooped over him above the peacock feathers she waved gently before her.

“Poor Kesiah, it is hard on her, too,” she observed, “and I sometimes think she is unjust enough to blame me in her heart.”

“But she doesn’t feel things as you do, one can tell that to look at her.”

“She isn’t so sensitive and silly, you dear boy, but my poor nerves are responsible for that, you must remember.  If Kesiah had been a man she would have been an artist, and it was really a pity that she happened to be born a woman.  When she was young she had a perfect mania for drawing, and it used to distress mother so much.  A famous portrait painter—­I can’t recall his name though I am sure it began with S—­saw one of her sketches by accident and insisted that we ought to send her to Paris to study.  Kesiah was wild to go at the time, but of course it was out of the question that a Virginia lady should go off by herself and paint perfectly nude people in a foreign city.  There was a dreadful scene, I remember, and Kesiah even wrote to Uncle William Burwell and asked him to come down and win mother over.  He came immediately, for he was the kindest soul, but, of course after he understood, he decided against it.  Why on earth should a girl want to go streaking across the water to study art, he asked, when she had a home she could stay in and men folk who could look after her?  They both told her she made herself ridiculous when she talked of ambition, and as they wouldn’t promise her a penny to live on, she was obliged in the end to give up the idea.  She nursed mother very faithfully, I must say, as long as she lived, never leaving her a minute night or day for the last year of her illness.  Don’t misjudge poor Kesiah, Jonathan, she has a good heart at bottom, though she has always been a little soured on account of her disappointment.”

“Oh, she was cut out for an old maid, one can see that,” rejoined Gay, only half interested in the history of his aunt, for he seldom exerted his imagination except under pressure of his desires, “and, by the way, mother, what kind of man was my Uncle Jonathan?”

“The dearest creature, my son, heaven alone knows what his loss meant to me!  Such consideration!  Such generosity!  Such delicacy!  He and Kesiah never got on well, and this was the greatest distress to me.”