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Updated: September 20, 2025
"Sit down, Josh," said Miss Hepsy, but Josh preferred to stand. There was just a moment's constrained silence. "I have called to see you, Mr. Strong," said Robert Keane, plunging into the subject without further delay, "about your nephew Tom. He is very anxious to become a painter, I find. Would you have any objections to me putting him in the way of life to which his desire and talent point him?"
It was raining heavily still, but that Tom did not mind; he was wondering how to frame his apology to his aunt, and how she would receive it. It was dark when he reached Thankful Rest, and the kitchen door was barred. He knocked twice, and was answered at last by Aunt Hepsy, who looked visibly relieved. Feeling that if he waited till he was in the light his courage would flee, he said hurriedly,
Miss Hepsy was plucking chickens for the market, and tossed up her head when her nephew and niece appeared before her. "I wonder you'd come back at all after livin' so long among gentle folk. It'll be a long time, I reckon, afore ye get the chance to jump through the ice after Miss Goldthwaite or any other miss. Here, Lucy, get off yer hat, and lend a hand wi' them chickens.
"Three months is a long time, Aunt Hepsy," said Lucy at last. Aunt Hepsy never spoke. Then Lucy rose and came to her, and laid her arm about her neck. "You don't want me to go, auntie, I know you don't." "Go away; I didn't say I didn't," said Aunt Hepsy in her gruffest tones. "Auntie, if you will only tell me you would rather I stayed, I won't go." "Don't ask questions, child.
"Good-bye, then, Miss Hepsy. It was only my love for Lucy made me speak. I'm sorry I've offended you. She is a dear, good girl. Some day, perhaps, you will be sorry you did not listen to my words," she said, and went away. Not many words, good or bad, did Aunt Hepsy speak in the house that night.
I don't suppose there's a happier girl anywhere than I am." "Nor a happier pair than ye make yer uncle an' me," said Aunt Hepsy softly. "Off ye go, ye waste my time like anything; time was when I'd make ye fly round considerable if ye'd ventured." Lucy laughed, and went her way, turning aside as she went through the paddock for a pleasant word with Uncle Josh ploughing in the low meadow.
Still, there was a limit to the entertaining power of Aunt Hepsy, which was perceived when she began to repeat her annals of the neighborhood, and to bring forward again and again the little nuggets of wisdom which she had evolved in the small circle of her experience. And similarly Mrs.
And he guessing nothing of her long, silent agony, himself sufficiently bemired in his slough of despond, working away with sad, unsatisfied heart in his little studio, hoping yet for light to come to his night was, in truth, so full of himself, that Hepsy Ann had little of his thoughts.
For, indeed, I must own that this young fellow had worked himself up to the highest and truest conception of his art, and felt, that, though the laborer is worthy of his hire, unhappy is the man who lowers his art to the level of a trade. In olden times, the priests did, indeed, eat of the sacrificial meats; but we live under a new and higher dispensation. Meantime, what of Hepsy Ann Nickerson?
Miss Alice Keane called at Thankful Rest on her pony, one morning, to ask Tom and Lucy to a Christmas-eve gathering. The invitation was curtly declined by Miss Hepsy, and she was dismissed with such scant courtesy that she departed very indignant indeed. "What a woman that is at Thankful Rest," she said to Miss Goldthwaite when she called at the parsonage.
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