The widower shoemaker and his children, and the woman who washed them —­ the children, I mean —­ on Saturdays, had all combined to erect a triumphal arch of, great splendor, and the woman showed such sensibility in the choice of mottoes, and such a nice appreciation of the joys of matrimony, together with a decided leaning towards the bridegroom’s side of the arch, that the shoemaker suggested that she should suit her actions to her words —­ that was how he expressed it —­ and marry him, which she agreed to do.  But she afterwards explained, in breaking the news to her friends, that they could have knocked her down with a leaf!  Whether this was due to the weakened state of her heart, or to her precarious position on the ladder, I do not know.

Everybody and everything was in a bustle, with the exception of Aunt Cecilia, who sat through it all as calm and as beautiful as ever.  Not that she did not feel parting with Pauline, but her love for everybody and everything was of a nature so purely unselfish that it never occurred to her to count the cost to herself.

I have never met any one who so completely combines in her character gentleness and strength as does Aunt Cecilia:  so gentle in spirit and judgment, and so strong in her fight for principles and beliefs.  If she has a weakness, and I could never wish any one I love to be without one, it lies in her love for Patience.  She does not think it right to play in the morning, but sometimes, being unable to withstand the temptation of so doing, she plays it in an empty drawer of her writing-table, and if she hears any one coming, she can close the drawer!

Her greatest interest in life, next to her husband and children, is her garden and other people’s gardens.  In fact, she looks at life generally from a gardening point of view, and is apt to regard men as gardeners, possible gardeners, or gardeners wasted.  As gardeners they have their very distinct use, and as such deserve every consideration, but if a man will not till the soil, he is a cumberer thereof.  She, at least, inclines that way in thought.  Life, she says, is a garden, children the flowers, parents the gardeners.  “If we treated children as we do roses, they would be far happier.  We don’t call roses naughty when they grow badly and refuse to flower as they ought to; we blame the gardeners or the soil.”

“But, Aunt Cecilia,” I say, “one can recommend an unsatisfactory gardener to a friend, but one can’t so dispose of unsatisfactory parents.”

“You must educate them, dear.”

Now all this sounds very convincing when said by Aunt Cecilia, because, for one thing, she says it very charmingly, and for another, she is still a very beautiful woman.  She is too fond, perhaps, of extinguishing her beauty under a large mushroom hat, and is given to bending too much over herbaceous borders, and so hiding her beautiful face.  But I dare say the flowers love to look at it, and to see mirrored in it their own loveliness.