Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt

Cordelia immediately drove up to the Kilpins’, taking ice and cool fruit drinks with her. That evening she told me something of the condition in which she had found Aggie and of the futility of trying to help her.
    â€œI wanted to bathe the poor child and put clean sheets on her bed, but Mrs. Kilpin wouldn’t allow me to touch her—said she wasn’t going to have her girl catch pneumonia by having a bath.” Aunt Cordelia closed her eyes briefly in exasperation. “Afraid of pneumonia, but not of filth and the agony of heat and fever. I wanted to tie that woman up outside the room and see to it that Agnes was cared for properly—for just once in her life.”
    A few days later on a hot Sunday when tempers were shorter than usual, Aunt Cordelia and I had one of our not infrequent clashes. She had given my room a quick inspection after church that morning, and had found its condition unsatisfactory.
    â€œYou will put your books and clothing in their proper places, Julia, and you will dust the room, including—especially including—the windowsills, which I find absolutely white with dust. And understand this, Julia: no lady has a right to that title unless she is not only clean of body and clothing, but is equally clean in her surroundings. Never let it be said that you have grown up in my home and have been so remiss as to throw your discarded underclothing under the bed—which is exactly where I found yours just now.”
    Her wrath was formidable; mine was rather intense too, for I felt that I might have been instructed to clean my room with considerably less sermonizing. Our clash was brief and bitter, and Aunt Cordelia was the victor. I spent the next hour converting the energy of rage into a zest for cleaning which resulted in an immaculate state that would have satisfied any top sergeant.
    Aunt Cordelia inspected my work and nodded approvingly. “I should think now that after a shower and a brief apology for your impertinence you might feel very much better, Julia.”
    â€œI am very sorry that I was impertinent, Aunt Cordelia,” I managed to say, and then fled for the bathroom and a shower. I wished as I stood under the cooling, cleansing flood of water that I were as fortunate as Uncle Haskell, living apart in the old carriage house, working on a magnum opus and communicating with Aunt Cordelia only infrequently.
    That was the afternoon that Carlotta Berry called, asking me to go driving with her. To receive an invitation to go driving with Lottie that summer was a coveted honor. Being an only child of unusually indulgent parents, Lottie had a great deal more in the way of clothes and expensive toys than most of us, and for her birthday that year she had received a gift that was the envy of all her classmates. The gift was a pony, a snowy, dainty-hoofed little creature, a wonderful gift in itself, but this one was harnessed to a wicker and patent leather cart. Carlotta had power in the possession of that pony cart: those who pleased her might share it, but there were no rides for those who did not.
    I supposed no favors would be granted me that afternoon, but Aunt Cordelia was a much fairer person than I sometimes believed her to be.
    â€œI see no reason why you shouldn’t go,” she said pleasantly. “You have fulfilled your duties and are entitled to some recreation.”
    â€œI can go!” I told Lottie joyfully, and when she arrived, cool and pretty in blue and white organdy, Aunt Cordelia looked at me thoughtfully and suggested that I might wear the dress from Laura’s wardrobe which she had altered to fit me, a fine white linen embroidered with tiny wreaths of rosy flowers and tied with a gay sash. It was plain that Aunt Cordelia wanted me to look no less well-dressed than the darling of the Berry household.
    Our gladiolas were in full bloom that week and while I dressed, Aunt Cordelia cut a great armful of the bright flowers and then