GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1920
Called upon to describe Aunt Sophy you would have to coin a term or fallback on the dictionary definition of a spinster. "An unmarried woman,"states that worthy work, baldly, "especially when no longer young."That, to the world, was Sophy Decker. Unmarried, certainly. And mostcertainly no longer young. In figure she was, at fifty, what is known inthe corset ads as a "stylish stout." Well dressed in blue serge, withbroad-toed health shoes and a small, astute hat. The blue serge waspractical common sense. The health shoes were comfort. The hat wasstrictly business. Sophy Decker made and sold hats, both astute andingenuous, to the female population of Chippewa, Wisconsin. Chippewa'sEast-End set bought the knowing type of hat, and the mill hands andhired girls bought the naïve ones. But whether lumpy or possessed ofthat indefinable thing known as line, Sophy Decker's hats were honesthats.
The world is full of Aunt Sophys, unsung. Plump, ruddy, capable womenof middle age. Unwed, and rather looked down upon by a family of marriedsisters and tolerant, good-humoured brothers-in-law, and careless niecesand nephews.
"Poor Aunt Soph," with a significant half smile. "She's such a good oldthing. And she's had so little in life, really."
She was, undoubtedly, a good old thing—Aunt Soph. Forever sending aspray of sweeping black paradise, like a jet of liquid velvet, to thispert little niece in Seattle; or taking Adele, sister Flora's daughter,to Chicago or New York, as a treat, on one of her buying trips.Burdening herself, on her business visits to these cities, with a dozenfoolish shopping commissions for the idle women folk of her family.Hearing without partisanship her sisters' complaints about theirhusbands, and her sisters' husbands' complaints about their wives. Itwas always the same.
"I'm telling you this, Sophy. I wouldn't breathe it to another livingsoul. But I honestly think, sometimes, that if it weren't for thechildren—"
There is no knowing why they confided these things to Sophy instead ofto each other, these wedded sisters of hers. Perhaps they held for eachother an unuttered distrust or jealousy. Perhaps, in making aconfidante of Sophy, there was something of the satisfaction that comesof dropping a surreptitious stone down a deep well and hearing it plunk,safe in the knowledge that it has struck no one and that it cannotrebound, lying there in the soft darkness. Sometimes they would end bysaying, "But you don't know what it is, Sophy. You can't. I'm sure Idon't know why I'm telling you all this."
But when Sophy answered, sagely, "I know; I know"—they paid littleheed, once having unburdened themselves. The curious part of it is thatshe did