It's
as bad as looking one's age. Tell me about the Brimley
Bomefields.''
``Well,'' said Clovis, ``the beginning of their tragedy
was that they found an aunt. The aunt had been there all
the time, but they had very nearly forgotten her existence
until a distant relative refreshed their memory, by
remembering her very distinctly in his will; it is wonderful
what the force of example will accomplish. The aunt, who
had been unobtrusively poor, became quite pleasantly rich,
and the Brimley Bomefields grew suddenly concerned at the
loneliness of her life and took her under their collective
wings. She had as many wings around her at this time as one
of those beast-things in Revelation.''
``So far I don't see any tragedy from the Brimley
Bomefields' point of view,'' said the Baroness.
``We haven't got to it yet,'' said Clovis. ``The aunt had
been used to living very simply, and had seen next to
nothing of what we should consider life, and her nieces
didn't encourage her to do much in the way of making a
splash with her money. Quite a good deal of it would come
to them at her death, and she was a fairly old woman, but
there was one circumstance which cast a shadow of gloom over
the satisfaction they felt in the discovery and acquisition
of this desirable aunt: she openly acknowledged that a
comfortable slice of her little fortune would go to a nephew
on the other side of her family.
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