vehemently, and cried so bitterly, and laughed so joyously, and
declared so often that it would be all the same a hundred years hence,
that letters and diary had to be packed away in the brown paper
parcel, and all work abandoned for that evening. The next day and the
next passed in continual quarrel and argument, and at the end of the
week the aunts were summoned.

Aunt Mary's features were sharp, her eyes were bright and she sat bolt
upright on the sofa, her hands crossed over a shawl drawn tightly
about her.

"Now, my dear James," she said, "I am very sorry for you; of course I
am. I know it is very trying, but there is no use in sitting there
lamenting. Put up your silk handkerchief and come to the point. We all
know it will be the same a hundred years hence, but in the meantime
you don't want your dinner put back, so that Sally may continue her
flirtations in the slonk," and Aunt Mary burst into a merry peal of
laughter.

"You are most unsympathetic, I never knew one so unsympathetic; you
were always so, you'll never change."

"Unsympathetic," said Aunt Mary, shaking with laughter; "how can you
say so? I have never done anything all my life but listen to you and
sympathise with you. When you were a boy and sold my books to the boys
at your school, and when you were a young man and took my poor husband
to oyster shops--you remember the stories you used to tell me?"

Mr. Brookes waved his handkerchief, and Aunt Hester, who was a
spinster, cast down her eyes and fidgeted with some papers which she