her company, and of all grown people she was the most considerate. She would remember, every ten minutes or so, to inquire courteously whether he was tired, but he was seldom tired in her company; with her, he never felt embarrassment in saying if he had to go to the bathroom, for she never seemed annoyed, but in consequence he seldom found it necessary to go when they came together on these downtown trips. Today Hannah bought a few of the simplest of things for herself and several more elaborate things for her sister-in-law and a beautifully transparent, flowered scarf for Mary’s birthday, taking Rufus into this surprise; then, in the art store, she inquired whether the Grammar of Ornament had arrived. But when they showed her the enormous and magnificently colored volume, she exclaimed with laughter, “Mercy, that is no grammar; it’s a whole encyclopedia,” and the clerk laughed politely, and she said she was afraid it was larger than she could carry; she would like to have it delivered. She must be sure, though, that it was delivered personally to her, no later than May twenty-first, that’s three days, can I be sure of that? No, she interrupted herself, in one of her rare confusions or changes of decision, that won’t do. She explained to Rufus, parenthetically, “Suppose there was an accident, and your Uncle Andrew saw it too soon!” She paused. “Do you think you can help me with a few more of these bundles?” she asked him. He replied proudly that of course he could. “Then we’ll take it now,” his aunt told the clerk, and after careful testing and distribution of the various bundles, they came back into the street. And there his Aunt Hannah made a proposal which astounded Rufus with gratitude. She turned to him and said, “And now if you’d like it, I’d like to give you a cap.”
He was tongue-tied; he felt himself blush. His aunt could not quite see the blush but his silence disconcerted her, for she had believed that this would make him really happy.
