So Jack gave the porter a dollar.
Then they left the train.
"I was so worried," Aunt Mary said, as she went along the platform hanging
on her nephew's arm. "I thought you'd met with an accident."
"I couldn't get on until the rest got off," he said, gazing down on her
with a smile; "but I was on hand, all right. My, but it's good to think
that you're here, Aunt Mary! Maybe you think that I don't appreciate your
taking all this trouble for me, but I do, just the same."
Aunt Mary smiled all over. Everyone who passed them was smiling, too, and
that added to the general joy of the atmosphere. Aunt Mary felt proud of
Jack, and rejoiced as to herself. Her content with life in general was,
for the moment, limitless. She did not stop to dissect the sources of her
delight. She was not in a critical mood just then.
"Why don't you stick those flowers in your belt, Aunt Mary?" her nephew
asked, as they penetrated the worst of the human jungle, and the
preservation of the violets appeared to be the main question of the day.
"That's what the girls do."
His aunt looked vaguely down at herself. She had no belt to stick her
violets in. She wore no belt. She wore a basque. A basque is a beltless
something that you can't remember, but that females did, once upon a time,
cover the upper half of their forms with. Basques buttoned down the front
with ten to thirty buttons, and may be studied at leisure in any good
collection of daguerreotypes. Ladies like Aunt Mary are apt to scorn such
futilities as waning styles after they pass beyond a certain age, and for
that reason there was no place for Jack's violets.
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