The Argosy — page 80: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

POOR AUNT DEB! By JANE MASON. OOR AUNT DEB! Yes, that was just what I thought as I read the superscription on the small bundle of papers I found in the cabinet in her room. ‘‘A page in a life’s history—to be destroyed at my death.” Fancy Aunt Deb with a secret of anyone’s to keep. I always thought of her as leading a comfortable, placid existence, without even a knowledge of any tragedy or soul’s trouble of any sort. But, however, here’s something evidently out of the common—and as she left all her possessions to ‘‘ My dear niece, Jane,” I don’t see why I should not share the secret, and see whether she really ever had an adventure, or what this precious bundle contains. a; FIFTEEN years ago I was sitting at my breakfast-table waiting for old Robin to bring me my letters, and any scrap of news he might have picked up from our rural postman ; congratulating myself meanwhile on the comfort and cosiness of my ‘“‘ain ingle neuk ” in this dreary November weather. When the letters came, however, my self-gratulations came to an abrupt end. On the top of the small heap was one from my brother in Lincolnshire. “ Nov. roth, 184—. “DEAR DeEB,—Would it be too cruel to ask you to come and stay a week with me? Mrs. Kenworthy is bound to go to the help of her sick daughter, and I have no fancy for being left to the tender mercies of two giggling girls. I must also be away one night, as Iam pledged to preach at A—, and cannot get home again till early the following morning. ‘Your disconsolate brother, ‘WILLIAM GRAND.” What could I say? JIshould prefer not to go, decidedly. But when I remembered his constant work in that lone, dreary parish, and how completely he depended on his old housekeeper for the few comforts he enjoyed, I could do nothing else but write and say I would be with him the next day. Accordingly in the early morning we started off, my maid, Marie, and I, by a train which landed us at the nearest station to Thorsville Rectory, just as the short gloomy day was sinking into darkness. No pony-carriage, no familiar face was there to greet me; but after some VOL. XLY. F cComicooolks (CO)