Only youth can be sentimental without being mirth-provoking . We loved Aunt Olivia and were glad for her late , new-blossoming happiness ; but we felt amused over it also . The recollection of her `` Mr. Malcolm MacPherson '' was too much for us every time we thought of it . Father pooh-poohed incredulously at first , and , when we had convinced him , guffawed with laughter . Aunt Olivia need not have dreaded any more opposition from her cruel family . `` MacPherson was a good fellow enough , but horribly poor , '' said father . `` I hear he has done very well out west , and if he and Olivia have a notion of each other they are welcome to marry as far as I am concerned . Tell Olivia she must n't take a spasm if he tracks some mud into her house once in a while . '' Thus it was all arranged , and , before we realized it at all , Aunt Olivia was mid-deep in marriage preparations , in all of which Peggy and I were quite indispensable . She consulted us in regard to everything , and we almost lived at her place in those days preceding the arrival of Mr. Malcolm MacPherson . Aunt Olivia plainly felt very happy and important . She had always wished to be married ; she was not in the least strong-minded and her old-maidenhood had always been a sore point with her . I think she looked upon it as somewhat of a disgrace . And yet she was a born old maid ; looking at her , and taking all her primness and little set ways into consideration , it was quite impossible to picture her as the wife of Mr. Malcolm MacPherson , or anybody else . We soon discovered that , to Aunt Olivia , Mr. Malcolm MacPherson represented a merely abstract proposition -- the man who was to confer on her the long-withheld dignity of matronhood . Her romance began and ended there , although she was quite unconscious of this herself , and believed that she was deeply in love with him . `` What will be the result , Mary , when he arrives in the flesh and she is compelled to deal with ` Mr. Malcolm MacPherson ' as a real , live man , instead of a nebulous ` party of the second part ' in the marriage ceremony ? '' queried Peggy , as she hemmed table-napkins for Aunt Olivia , sitting on her well-scoured sandstone steps , and carefully putting all thread-clippings and ravellings into the little basket which Aunt Olivia had placed there for that purpose . `` It may transform her from a self-centered old maid into a woman for whom marriage does not seem such an incongruous thing , '' I said . The day on which Mr. Malcolm MacPherson was expected Peggy and I went over .
We had planned to remain away , thinking that the lovers would prefer their first meeting XXXXX be unwitnessed , but Aunt Olivia insisted on our being present .
as at if on out that to upon with without