A Family and a Fortune by Ivy Compton-Burnett Page B

a glance and withdrew it; and Oliver surveyed the scene as if it were not his concern.
    â€˜You help us, dear, indeed,’ said Matty. ‘It was a kind and loving wish, and as such we accept it and will try to let it do its work.’
    â€˜I know you will, Aunt Matty dear; I know your inexhaustible fund of courage. You know, I am of those who remember you of old, straight and tall and proud, as you appeared to my childish eyes. My feeling for you has its ineradicable root in the past.’
    The words brought a silence, and Justine, fair in all her dealings, broke it herself.
    â€˜How are you, Miss Griffin?’ she said, shaking hands with great cordiality, and then sitting down and seeming torender the room at once completely full. ‘Now this is a snug little cottage parlour. Now, how do you take to it, Aunt Matty?’
    â€˜We shall be content in it, dear. We mean to be. And where there is a will there is a way. And it should not be difficult to come to like it, our little cottage parlour. Those are good and pretty words for it. They give the idea without any adding to it or taking away.’
    â€˜It is not a cottage, dear,’ said Blanche, looking at her daughter.
    â€˜Isn’t it, Mother? Well, no, we know it strictly is not. But it gives all the idea of one somehow. And I mean nothing disparaging; I like a roomy cottage. When I am a middle-aged woman and Mark is supreme in the home, I shall like nothing better than to have perhaps this very little place, and reign in it, and do all I can for people outside. Now does not that strike you all as an alluring prospect?’
    â€˜Yes, it sounds very nice,’ said Miss Griffin, who thought that it did, and who was perhaps the natural person to reply, as the arrangement involved the death of most of the other people present.
    â€˜I don’t think it gives the idea of a cottage at all,’ said Blanche, looking round with contracting eyes. ‘The rooms are so high and the windows so broad. One could almost imagine oneself anywhere.’
    â€˜But not quite,’ said her sister, bending her head and looking up at the men from under it. ‘We can’t, for example, imagine ourselves where we used to be.’
    â€˜Well, no, not there, dear. We must both of us leave that. It was my old home too, as you seem to forget.’
    â€˜No, dear. You do at times, I think. That is natural. You have put too much over it. Other things have overlaid the memory. I chose to keep it clear and by itself. There is the difference.’
    â€˜Well, it
is
natural, Aunt Matty,’ said Justine. ‘I don’t think Mother must be blamed for it. There
is
a difference.’
    â€˜Yes, dear, and so you will not blame her. I have said that I do not. And is the old aunt already making herself tiresome?She must be so bright and easy as an invalid in a strange place?’
    â€˜Come, Aunt Matty, invalid is not the word. You are disabled, we know, and we do not underrate the handicap, but your invalidism begins and ends there. Now I am not going to countenance any repining. You are in your virtual prime; you have health and looks and brains; and we are going to expect a good deal from you.’
    â€˜My dear, did Aunt Matty ask you to sum up her position?’ said Blanche, a faint note of triumphant pride underlying her reproof.
    â€˜No, Mother, you know she did not, so why put the question? I did not wait to be asked; it is rather my way not to. You need not put on a disapproving face. I have to be taken as I am. I do not regret what I said, and Aunt Matty will not when she thinks it over.’
    â€˜Or forgets it,’ said her aunt. ‘Yes, I think that is what Aunt Matty had better do. She has not the will or the energy to think it over at this juncture of her life. And forgetting it will be better, so that is the effort she must make.’
    â€˜Now I am in disgrace, but I do not regard it. I have had my say and I always