The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary Part 44

Lucinda rushed from the room.

"She wants the calf shod!" she cried, bursting in upon Joshua, who was piling wood.

For once in his life Joshua was shaken out of his usual placidity.

"She wants the calf shod!" he repeated blankly.

"Yes."

"You can't shoe a calf."

"But she wants it done."

Joshua regained his self-control.

"Oh, well," he said, turning to go on with his work, "the calf's gone to the butcher, anyhow. Tell her so."

Lucinda went back to Aunt Mary.

"The calf's gone to the butcher," she yelled.

Aunt Mary frowned heavily.

"Then you go an' get a lamp and turn it up too high an' leave it," she said,-"the smell'll make me think of automobiles."

Lucinda was appalled. As a practical housekeeper she felt that here was a proposition which she could not face.

"Well, ain't you goin'?" Aunt Mary asked tartly. "Of course if you ain't intendin' to go I'd be glad to know it; 'n while you're gone, Lucinda, I wish you'd get me the handle to the ice-cream freezer an' lay it where I can see it; it'll help me believe in the smell."

Lucinda went away and brought the handle, but she did not light the lamp.

The Fates were good to her, though, for Aunt Mary forgot the lamp in her disgust over the appearance of the handle.

"Take it away," she said sharply. "Anybody'd know it wasn't an automobile crank. I don't want to look like a fool! Well, why ain't you takin' it away, Lucinda?"

Lucinda took the crank back to the freezer; but as the days pa.s.sed on, the situation grew worse. Aunt Mary slept more and more, and awoke to an ever-increasing ratio of belligerency.

Before long Lucinda's third cousin demanded her a.s.sistance in "moving,"

and there was nothing for poor Arethusa to do but to take up the burden, now become a fearfully heavy one.

Aunt Mary was getting to that period in life when the nearer the relative the greater the dislike, so that when her niece arrived the welcome which awaited her was even less cordial than ever.

"Did you bring a trunk?" she asked.

"A small one," replied the visitor.

"That's something to be grateful for," said the aunt. "If I'd invited you to visit me, of course I'd feel differently about things."

Arethusa accepted this as she accepted all things, unpacked, saw Lucinda off, a.s.sumed charge of the house, and then dragged a rocking chair to her aunt's bedside and unfolded her sewing. Ere she had threaded her needle Aunt Mary was sound asleep, and so her niece sewed placidly for an hour or more, until, like lightning out of a clear sky:

"Arethusa!"

The owner of the name started-but answered immediately:

"Yes, Aunt Mary."

"When I die I want to be buried from a roof garden! Don't you forget!

You'd better go an' write it down. Go now-go this minute!"

Arethusa shook as if with the discharge of a contiguous field battery. She had not had Lucinda's gradual breaking-in to her aunt's new trains of thought.

"Aunt Mary," she said feebly at last.

Aunt Mary saw her lips moving; she sat up in bed and her eyes flashed cinders.

"Well, ain't you goin'?" she asked wrathfully. "When I say do a thing, can't it be done? I declare it's bad enough to live with a pack of idiots without havin' 'em, one an' all, act as if I was the idiot!"

Arethusa laid aside her work and rose to quit the room. She returned five minutes later with pen and ink, but Aunt Mary was now off on another tack.

"I want a bulldog!" she cried imperatively.

"A bulldog!" shrieked her niece, nearly dropping what she held in her hands. "What do you want a bulldog for?"

"Not a bullfrog!" the old lady corrected; "a bulldog. Oh, I do get so sick of your stupidity, Arethusa," she said. "What should I or any one else want of a bullfrog?"

Arethusa sighed, and the sigh was apparent.

"I'd sigh if I was you," said her aunt. "I certainly would. If I was you, Arethusa, I'd certainly feel that I had cause to sigh;" and with that she sat up and gave her pillow a punch that was full of the direst sort of suggestion.

Arethusa did not gainsay the truth of the sighing proposition. It was too apparent.

The next day Aunt Mary slept until noon, and then opened her eyes and simultaneously declared:

"Next summer I'm goin' to have an automobile!"

Then she looked about and saw that she had addressed the air, which made her more mad than ever. She rang her bell violently, and Arethusa left the lunch table so hastily that she reached the bedroom half-choked.

"Next summer I'm goin' to have an automobile," said the old lady angrily.

"Now, get me some breakfast."

Her niece went out quickly, and a maid was sent in with tea and toast and eggs at once. Their effect was to brace the invalid up and make the lot of those about her yet more wearing.

"I shall run it myself," she vowed, when Arethusa returned; "an' I bet they clear out when they see me comin'."

It did seem highly probable.

"I don't know how I can live if I don't get away from here soon," she declared a few minutes later. "You don't appreciate what life is, Arethusa. Seems like I'll go mad with wantin' to be somewhere else. I can see Jack gets his disposition straight from me."

There was a sigh and a pause.