Arthur had told her she was going to be, and then that she had been.
Which was what had indeed happened; for Aunt Alice was a round little
woman even in those days, nicely though not obtrusively padded with
agreeable fat at the corners, and her skin, just as now, had the moist
delicacy that comes from eating a great many chickens. Also she
suggested, just as now, most of the things most men want to come home
to,--slippers, and drawn curtains, and a blazing fire, and peace within
one's borders, and even, as Anna-Rose pointed out privately to
Anna-Felicitas after they had come across them for the first time, she
suggested muffins; and so, being in these varied fashions succulent, she
was doomed to make some good man happy. But she did find it real hard
work.

It grew plain to Aunt Alice after another month of them that Uncle
Arthur would not much longer endure his nieces, and that even if he did
she would not be able to endure Uncle Arthur. The thought was very
dreadful to her that she was being forced to choose between two duties,
and that she could not fulfil both. It came to this at last, that she
must either stand by her nieces, her dead sister's fatherless children,
and face all the difficulties and discomforts of such a standing by, go
away with them, take care of them, till the war was over; or she must
stand by Arthur.

She chose Arthur.

How could she, for nieces she had hardly seen, abandon her husband?
Besides, he had scolded her so steadily during the whole of their
married life that she was now unalterably attached to him. Sometimes a
wild thought did for a moment illuminate the soothing dusk of her mind,
the thought of doing the heroic thing, leaving him for them, and helping