What perfectly charming letters you write! Now, don't laugh and say I
am talking nonsense; it is really true. You make the simplest things
interesting by your way of telling them; and your observations and
humor are so keen that I often feel sorry the world does not know
something of them. I never remember you to have told me anything
twice, and that can be said of very few people; but there are few
enough people in the least like you, my dearest auntie. . . .
Aunt Ebie did not look romantic, or, exactly mysterious, as I first
saw her. But she puzzled me splendidly nevertheless. She was knitting
some very heavy blue socks in our library, and her needles were
extremely large and shining. I do not know why she had undertaken this
prosaic occupation. Everybody was, to be sure, knitting socks for the
soldiers at that time; but somehow aunt Ebie did not strike me as
absolutely benevolent, and I doubt if she would have labored very
eagerly for a soldier whom she had never seen. She desired to teach
me to knit; and, as I was really afraid of her, I pretended to be
anxious to learn.
I had been told that it was almost an impossibility to get her to
travel even a few miles; that the excitement of change and crowds, and
danger from steam and horse, made her extremely tremulous and
wretched. I was the more impressed by these quavers in her because I
also knew that she had sufficient strength of character to upset a
kingdom, if she chose; that she could use a sceptre of keen sarcasm
which made heads roll off on all sides; that there was nothing which
her large, lustrous eyes could not see, and nothing they could not
conceal.
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