3

aunt glosspan was nearly seventy when she became guardian to lexington, but to look at her you

would never have guessed it for one minute. she was as sprightly as a woman half her age, with a

small, wrinkled, but still quite beautiful face and two lovely brown eyes that sparkled at you in the

nicest way. she was also a spinster, though you would never have guessed that either, for there

was nothing spinsterish about aunt glosspan. she was never bitter or gloomy or irritable; she

didn’t have a moustache; and she wasn’t in the least bit jealous of other people, which in itself is

something you can seldom say about either a spinster or a virgin lady, although of course it is not

known for certain whether aunt glosspan qualified on both counts.

but she was an eccentric old woman, there was no doubt about that. for the past thirty years she

had lived a strange isolated life all by herself in a tiny cottage high up on the slopes of the blue

ridge mountains, several miles from the nearest village. she had five acres of pasture, a plot for

growing vegetables, a flower garden, three cows, a dozen hens, and a fine cockerel.

and now she had little lexington as well.

she was a strict vegetarian and regarded the consumption of animal flesh as not only unhealthy

and disgusting, but horribly cruel. she lived upon lovely clean foods like milk, butter, eggs,

cheese, vegetables, nuts, herbs, and fruit and she rejoiced in the conviction that no living creature

would be slaughtered on her account, not even a shrimp. once, when a brown hen of hers passed

away in the prime of life from being eggbound, aunt glosspan was so distressed that she nearly

gave up egg-eating altogether.

she knew not the first thing about babies, but that didn’t worry her in the least. at the railway

station in new york, while waiting for the train that would take her and lexington back to

virginia, she bought six feeding-bottles, two dozen diapers, a box of safety pins, a carton of milk

for the journey, and a small paper-covered book called the care of infants. what more could

anyone want? and when the train got going, she fed the baby some milk, changed its nappies after

a fashion, and laid it down on the seat to sleep. then she read the care of infants from cover to

cover.

‘there is no problem here,’ she said, throwing the book out of the window. ‘no problem at all.’

and curiously enough there wasn’t. back home in the cottage everything went just as smoothly

as could be. little lexington drank his milk and belched and yelled and slept exactly as a good

baby should, and aunt glosspan glowed with joy whenever she looked at him and showered him

with kisses all day long.