Gentle Julia | Page 7

"Ain't I says so to you' Aunt Julia? She done tole
me, 'No,' she say. She say, she say Berjum cats ain't wash they self;
they got to take an' git somebody else to wash 'em!"
"If we're goin' to bathe 'em," said Florence, "we ought to know their
names, so's we can tell 'em to hold still and everything. You can't do
much with an animal unless you know their name. Did Aunt Julia tell
you these cats' names, Kitty Silver?"
"She say they name Feef an' Meemuh. Yes'm! Feef an' Meemuh! Whut
kine o' name is Feef an' Meemuh fer cat name!"
"Oh, those are lovely names!" Florence assured her, and, turning to
Herbert, explained: "She means Fifi and Mimi."
"Feef an' Meemuh," said Kitty Silver. "Them name don' suit me, an'
them long-hair cats don' suit me neither." Here she lifted the cover of
the basket a little, and gazed nervously within. "Look at there!" she said.

"Look at the way they lookin' at me! Don't you look at me thataway,
you Feef an' Meemuh!" She clapped the lid down and fastened it.
"Fixin' to jump out an' grab me, was you?"
"I guess, maybe," said Florence, "maybe I better go ask Aunt Julia if I
and Herbert can't wash 'em. I guess I better go ask her anyhow." And
she ran up the steps and skipped into the house by way of the kitchen.
A moment later she appeared in the open doorway of a room upstairs.
CHAPTER TWO
It was a pretty room, lightly scented with the pink geraniums and blue
lobelia and coral fuchsias that poised, urgent with colour, in the
window-boxes at the open windows. Sunshine paused delicately just
inside, where forms of pale-blue birds and lavender flowers curled up
and down the cretonne curtains; and a tempered, respectful light fell
upon a cushioned chaise longue; for there fluffily reclined, in garments
of tender fabric and gentle colours, the prettiest twenty-year-old girl in
that creditably supplied town.
It must be said that no stranger would have taken Florence at first
glance to be her niece, though everybody admitted that Florence's hair
was pretty. ("I'll say that for her," was the family way of putting it.).
Florence did not care for her hair herself; it was dark and thick and long,
like her Aunt Julia's; but Florence--even in the realistic presence of a
mirror--preferred to think of herself as an ashen blonde, and also as
about a foot taller than she was. Persistence kept this picture habitually
in her mind, which, of course, helps to explain her feeling that she was
justified in wearing that manner of superciliousness deplored by her
mother. More middle-aged gentlemen than are suspected believe that
they look like the waspen youths in the magazine advertisements of
clothes; and this impression of theirs accounts (as with Florence) for
much that is seemingly inexplicable in their behaviour.
Florence's Aunt Julia was reading an exquisitely made little book,
which bore her initials stamped in gold upon the cover; and it had
evidently reached her by a recent delivery of the mail, for wrappings

bearing cancelled stamps lay upon the floor beside the chaise longue. It
was a special sort of book, since its interior was not printed, but all
laboriously written with pen and ink--poems, in truth, containing more
references to a lady named Julia than have appeared in any other poems
since Herrick's. So warmly interested in the reading as to be rather pink,
though not always with entire approval, this Julia nevertheless, at the
sound of footsteps, closed the book and placed it beneath one of the
cushions assisting the chaise longue to make her position a comfortable
one. Her greeting was not enthusiastic.
"What do you want, Florence?"
"I was going to ask you if Herbert and me--I mean: Was it Noble Dill
gave you Fifi and Mimi, Aunt Julia?"
"Noble Dill? No."
"I wish it was," Florence said. "I'd like these cats better if they were
from Noble Dill."
"Why?" Julia inquired. "Why are you so partial to Mr. Noble Dill?"
"I think he's so much the most inter'sting looking of all that come to see
you. Are you sure it wasn't Noble Dill gave you these cats, Aunt Julia?"
A look of weariness became plainly visible upon Miss Julia Atwater's
charming face. "I do wish you'd hurry and grow up, Florence," she said.
"I do, too! What for, Aunt Julia?"
"So there'd be somebody else in the family of an eligible age. I really
think it's an outrageous position to be in," Julia continued, with languid
vehemence--"to be the only girl between thirteen and forty-one in a
large connection of near relatives, including children, who all seem to
think they haven't anything to think of but Who comes to