Chapter 8: Aunt Nettie Meets Her Match

Mrs. Nettie Colebrook came at half-past five. She was a small, nervous-looking woman with pale-blue eyes and pale-yellow hair. She greeted her brother with a burst of tears.

“Oh, Daniel, Daniel, how can you stand it—how can you stand it!” she cried, throwing herself upon the man’s somewhat unresponsive shoulder.

“There, there, Nettie, control yourself, do!” besought the man uncomfortably, trying to withdraw himself from the clinging arms.

“But how CAN you stand it!—your only son—blind!” wailed Mrs.
Colebrook, with a fresh burst of sobs.
“I notice some things have to be stood,” observed Susan grimly. Susan, with Mrs. Colebrook’s traveling-bag in her hand, was waiting with obvious impatience to escort her visitor upstairs to her room.

Susan’s terse comment accomplished what Daniel Burton’s admonition had been quite powerless to bring about. Mrs. Colebrook stopped sobbing at once, and drew herself somewhat haughtily erect.

“And, pray, who is this?” she demanded, looking from one to the other.

“Well, ‘this’ happens to be the hired girl, an’ she’s got some biscuits in the oven,” explained Susan crisply. “If you’ll be so good, ma’am, I’ll show you upstairs to your room.”

“Daniel!” appealed Mrs. Colebrook, plainly aghast.

But her brother, with a helpless gesture, had turned away, and Susan, bag in hand, was already halfway up the stairs. With heightened color and a muttered “Impertinence!” Mrs. Colebrook turned and followed Susan to the floor above.

A little way down the hall Susan threw open a door.

“I swept, but I didn’t have no time to dust,” she announced as she put down the bag. “There’s a duster in that little bag there. Don’t lock the door. Somethin’ ails it. If you do you’ll have to go out the window down a ladder. There’s towels in the top drawer, an’ you’ll have to fill the pitcher every day, ‘cause there’s a crack an’ it leaks, an’ you can’t put in the water only to where the crack is. Is there anything more you want?”

“Thank you. If you’ll kindly take me to Master Keith’s room, that will be all that I require,” answered Mrs. Colebrook frigidly, as she unpinned her hat and laid that on top of her coat on the bed.

“All right, ma’am. He’s a whole lot better. He’s been up an’ dressed to-day, but he’s gone back to bed now. His room is right down here, jest across the hall,” finished Susan, throwing wide the door.

There was a choking cry, a swift rush of feet, then Mrs. Colebrook, on her knees, was sobbing at the bedside.

“Oh, Keithie, Keithie, my poor blind boy! What will you do? How will you ever live? Never to see again, never to see again! Oh, my poor boy, my poor blind boy!”

Susan, at the door, flung both hands above her head, then plunged down the stairs.

“Fool! FOOL! FOOL!” she snarled at the biscuits in the oven. “Don’t you know ANYTHING?” Yet the biscuits in the oven were puffing up and browning beautifully, as the best of biscuits should.

When Susan’s strident call for supper rang through the hall, Mrs. Colebrook was with her brother in the studio. She had been bemoaning and bewailing the cruel fate that had overtaken “that dear boy,” and had just asked for the seventh time how he could stand it, when from the hall below came:

“Supper’s ready, supper’s ready,
Hurry up or you’ll be late.
Then you’ll sure be cross an’ heady,
If there’s nothin’ left to ate.”
“Daniel, what in the world is the meaning of that?” she interrupted sharply.

“That? Oh, that is Susan’s—er—supper bell,” shrugged the man, with a little uneasy gesture.

“You mean that you’ve heard it before?—that that is her usual method of summoning you to your meals?”

“Y-yes, when she’s good-natured,” returned the man, with a still more uneasy shifting of his position. “Come, shall we go down?”

“DANIEL! And you stand it?”

“Oh, come, come! You don’t understand—conditions here. Besides, I’ve tried to stop it.”