If one could just tell her not to be so silly!"
Not only had Purdy never once looked near Amelia--for the most part he
had sat rather mum-chance, half-way in and out of a French window, even
Zara's attempts to enliven him falling flat--but, during an extra loud
performance, Tilly had confided to Mary the family's plans for their
spinster relative. And: "The poor little woman!" thought Mary again as
she listened. For, after having been tied for years to the sick bed of a
querulous mother; after braving the long sea-voyage, which for such a
timid soul was full of ambushes and terrors, Miss Amelia had reached her
journey's end only to find both father and brother comfortably wived,
and with no use for her. Neither of them wanted her. She had been given
house-room first by her father, then by the Henrys, and once more had
had to go back to the paternal roof.
"It was nothing for Mossieu Henry in the long run," was his stepmother's
comment. But she laughed good-humouredly as she said it; for, his first
wrath at her intrusion over, Henry had more or less become her friend;
and now maintained that it was not a bad thing for his old father to
have a sensible, managing woman behind him. Tilly had developed in many
ways since her marriage; and Henry and she mutually respected each
other's practical qualities.
The upshot of the affair was, she now told Mary, that Miss Amelia's male
relatives had subscribed a dowry for her. "It was me that insisted Henry
should pay his share--him getting all the money 'e did with Agnes.
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