The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary Part 43

Lucinda delivered up the letters without demanding what species of conversational significance her mistress attached to the phrase, "holly-hocking."

Aunt Mary turned the letters through eagerly.

"My lands alive!" she said suddenly, "if here isn't one from Mitch.e.l.l,-the dear boy. Well, I never did!-Lucinda, open the blinds to the other window, too-so I-can-see to-" her voice died away,-she was too deep in the letter to recollect what she was saying.

Mitch.e.l.l wrote:

MY DEAR MISS WATKINS:-

We are sitting in a row with ashes on the heads of our cigarettes mourning, mourning, mourning, because we have had the news that you are ill. As usual it is up to me to express our feelings, so I have decided to mail them and the others agree to pay for the ink.

I wish to remark at once that we did not sleep any last night.

Jack told us at dinner, and we spent the evening making a melancholy tour of places where we had been with you. If you had only been with us! The roof gardens are particularly desolate without you. The whole of the city seems to realize it. The watering carts weep from dawn to dark. All the lamp-posts are wearing black. It is sad at one extreme and sadder at the other.

You must brace up. If you can't do that try a belt. Life is too short to spend in bed. My motto has always been "Spend freely everywhere else." At present I recommend anything calculated to mend you. I may in all modesty mention that just before Christmas I shall be traveling north and shall then adore to stop and cheer you up a bit if you invite me. I have made it an invariable rule, however, not to stay over night anywhere when I am not invited, so I hope you will consider my feelings and send me an invitation.

My eyes fill as I think what it will be to sit beside you and recall dear old New York. It will be the next best thing to being run over by an automobile, won't it?

Yours, with fondest recollections,

HERBERT KENDRICK MITCh.e.l.l.

Aunt Mary laid the letter down.

"Lucinda," she said in a curiously veiled tone, "give me a handkerchief-a big one. As big a one as I've got."

Lucinda did as requested.

"Now, go away," said Aunt Mary.

Lucinda went away. She went straight to Joshua.

"She's had a letter an' read it an' it's made her cry," she said.

"That's better'n if it made her mad," said Joshua, who was warming his hands at the stove.

"I ain't sure that it won't make her mad later," said Lucinda. "Say, but she is a Tartar since she came back. Seems some days's if I couldn't live."

"You'll live," said Joshua, and, as his hands were now well-warmed, he went out again.

After a while Aunt Mary's bell jangled violently and Lucinda had to hurry back.

"Lucinda, did the doctor say anythin' to you about how long he thought I might be sick?"

"Yes, he did."

"What did he say? I want to know jus' what he said. Speak up!"

"He said he didn't have no idea how long you'd be sick."

Aunt Mary threw a look at Lucinda that ought to have annihilated her.

"I want to see Jack," she said. "Bring my writin' desk. Right off. Quick."

She wrote to Jack, and he came up and spent the next Sunday with her, cheering her mightily.

"I wish the others could have come, too," she said once an hour all through his visit. Mitch.e.l.l's letter seemed to have bred a tremendous longing within her.

"They'll come later," said Jack, with hearty good-will. "They all want to come."

"I don't know how we could ever have any fun up here though," said his aunt sadly. "My heavens alive, Jack,-but this is an awful place to live in. And to think that I lived to be seventy before I found it out."

Jack took her hand and kissed it. He did sympathize, even if he was only twenty-two and longing unutterably to be somewhere else and kissing someone else at that very minute.

"Mitch.e.l.l wrote me a letter," continued Aunt Mary. "He said he was comin'.

Well, dear me, he can eat mince pie and drive with Joshua when he goes for the mail, but I don't know what else I can do with him. Oh, if I'd only been born in the city!"

Jack kissed her hand again. He didn't know what to say. Aunt Mary's lot seemed to border upon the tragic just then and there.

The next day he returned to town and Lucinda came on duty again. She soon found that the nephew's visit had rendered the aunt harder than ever to get along with.

"I'm goin' to town jus''s soon as ever I feel well enough," she declared aggressively on more than one occasion. "An' nex' time I go I'm goin' to stay jus''s long as ever I'm havin' a good time. Now, don't contradict me, Lucinda, because it's your place to hold your tongue. I'm a great believer in your holding your tongue, Lucinda."

Lucinda, who certainly never felt the slightest inclination toward contradiction, held her tongue, and the poor, unhappy one twisted about in bed, and bemoaned the quietude of her environment by the hour at a time.

"Did you say we had a calf?" she asked suddenly one day. "Well, why don't you answer? When I ask a question I expect an answer. Didn't you say we had a calf?"

Lucinda nodded.

"Well, I want Joshua to take that calf to the blacksmith and have him shod behind an' before right off. To-day-this minute."

"You want the calf shod!" cried Lucinda, suddenly alarmed by the fear lest her mistress had gone light-headed.

Aunt Mary glared in a way that showed that she was far from being out of her usual mind.

"If I said shod, I guess I meant shod," she said, icily. "I do sometimes mean what I say. Pretty often-as a usual thing."

Lucinda stood at the foot of the bed, petrified and paralyzed.

Then the invalid sat up a little and showed some mercy on her servant's very evident fright.

"I want the calf shod," she explained, "so's Joshua can run up an' down the porch with him."

So far from ameliorating Lucinda's condition, this explanation rendered it visibly worse. Aunt Mary contemplated her in silence for a few seconds, and she suddenly cried out, in a tone that was full of pathos:

"I feel like maybe-maybe-the calf'll make me think it's horses' feet on the pavement."