



Produced by Emmy, Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
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from the Google Print project.)










AUNT CRETE’S EMANCIPATION

[Illustration: “SHE WATCHED LUELLA’S DISMAYED FACE WITH GROWING
ALARM”]




Aunt Crete’s Emancipation


    BY
    GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL-LUTZ
    Author of “The Girl from Montana,”
    “The Story of a Whim,” Etc.


    ILLUSTRATIONS BY
    CLARA E. ATWOOD


    THE GOLDEN RULE COMPANY
    TREMONT TEMPLE
    BOSTON, MASS.




    _Copyright, 1911_

    BY THE GOLDEN RULE COMPANY




CONTENTS


    CHAPTER                                      PAGE
       I. A TELEGRAM AND A FLIGHT                  11
      II. THE BACKWOODS COUSIN                     25
     III. A WONDERFUL DAY                          39
      IV. AUNT CRETE TRANSFORMED                   61
       V. LUELLA AND HER MOTHER ARE MYSTIFIED      79
      VI. AN EMBARRASSING MEETING                  96
     VII. LUELLA’S HUMILIATION                    117
    VIII. AUNT CRETE’S PARTNERSHIP                132




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                             PAGE
    “SHE WATCHED LUELLA’S DISMAYED FACE WITH GROWING
            ALARM”        _Frontispiece_
    “HE HELPED WITH VIGOR”                                     31
    “DONALD WATCHED HER WITH SATISFACTION”                     52
    “SHE BEAMED UPON THE WHOLE TRAINFUL OF PEOPLE”             63
    “‘SOMEWHERE I HAVE SEEN THAT WOMAN,’ EXCLAIMED LUELLA’S
            MOTHER”                                            81
    “THEY STOOD FACE TO FACE WITH THE WONDERFUL LADY IN
            THE GRAY GOWN”                                    102
    “‘IT’S A LIE! I SAY IT’S A LIE!’”                         123
    “AUNT CRETE WAS AT LAST EMANCIPATED”                      143




Aunt Crete’s Emancipation




CHAPTER I

A TELEGRAM AND A FLIGHT


“WHO’S at the front door?” asked Luella’s mother, coming in from
the kitchen with a dish-towel in her hand. “I thought I heard the
door-bell.”

“Luella’s gone to the door,” said her sister from her vantage-point at
the crack of the sitting-room door. “It looks to me like a telegraph
boy.”

“It couldn’t be, Crete,” said Luella’s mother impatiently, coming to
see for herself. “Who would telegraph now that Hannah’s dead?”

Lucretia was short and dumpy, with the comfortable, patient look of the
maiden aunt that knows she is indispensable because she will meekly
take all the burdens that no one else wants to bear. Her sister could
easily look over her head into the hall, and her gaze was penetrative
and alert.

“I’m sure I don’t know, Carrie,” said Lucretia apprehensively; “but I’m
all of a tremble. Telegrams are dreadful things.”

“Nonsense, Crete, you always act like such a baby. Hurry up, Luella.
Don’t stop to read it. Your aunt Crete will have a fit. Wasn’t there
anything to pay? Who is it for?”

Luella, a rather stout young woman in stylish attire, with her mother’s
keen features unsoftened by sentiment, advanced, irreverently tearing
open her mother’s telegram and reading it as she came. It was one of
the family grievances that Luella was stout like her aunt instead
of tall and slender like her mother. The aunt always felt secretly
that they somehow blamed her for being of that type. “It makes one so
hard to fit,” Luella’s mother remarked frequently, and adding with a
disparaging glance at her sister’s dumpy form, “So impossible!”

At such times the aunt always wrinkled up her pleasant little
forehead into a V upside down, and trotted off to her kitchen, or her
buttonholes, or whatever was the present task, sighing helplessly. She
tried to be the best that she could always; but one couldn’t help one’s
figure, especially when one was partly dependent on one’s family for
support, and dressmakers and tailors took so much money. It was bad
enough to have one stout figure to fit in the family without two; and
the aunt always felt called upon to have as little dressmaking done
as possible, in order that Luella’s figure might be improved from the
slender treasury. “Clothes do make a big difference,” she reflected.
And sometimes when she was all alone in the twilight, and there was
really nothing that her alert conscience could possibly put her hand to
doing for the moment, she amused herself by thinking what kind of dress
she would buy, and who should make it, if she should suddenly attain a
fortune. But this was a harmless amusement, inasmuch as she never let
it make her discontented with her lot, or ruffle her placid brow for an
instant.

But just now she was “all of a tremble,” and the V in her forehead was
rapidly becoming a double V. She watched Luella’s dismayed face with
growing alarm.

“For goodness’ sake alive!” said Luella, flinging herself into the most
comfortable rocker, and throwing her mother’s telegram on the table.
“That’s not to be tolerated! Something’ll have to be done. We’ll have
to go to the shore at once, mother. I should die of mortification to
have a country cousin come around just now. What would the Grandons
think if they saw him? I can’t afford to ruin all my chances for a
cousin I’ve never seen. Mother, you simply must do something. I won’t
stand it!”

“What in the world are you talking about, Luella?” said her mother
impatiently. “Why didn’t you read the telegram aloud, or why didn’t you
give it to me at once? Where are my glasses?”

The aunt waited meekly while her sister found her glasses, and read the
telegram.

“Well, I declare! That is provoking to have him