The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary | Page 4

Watkins, Jr., Denham, for so her father's daughter had insisted that her youngest nephew should be called, was the favorite nephew of his aunt.
And it was lucky for him that he was the favorite, for Aunt Mary, who was highly spiced at fifty, became peppery at sixty, and almost biting at seventy. And yet for Jack she would sign checks almost without a murmur. Mr. Stebbins was much more censorious and impatient with the young man than she ever was; and to all the rest of the world Mr. Stebbins was an urbane and agreeable gentleman, whereas to all the rest of the world Aunt Mary was a problem or a terror. But Mr. Stebbins needed to be a man of tact and management, for he was the real manager of that fortune of which "Mary, only surviving child of John Watkins, merchant and ship owner," was the legal possessor; and so tactful was Mr. Stebbins that he and his powerful client had never yet clashed, and they had been in close business relations for almost as many years as Lucinda had been established on the hearthstone of the Watkins home. Perhaps one reason why Mr. Stebbins endured so well was that he had a real talent for compromising, and that he had skillfully transformed Aunt Mary's inherited taste for driving a bargain into an acquired pleasure in what is really a polite form of the same action.
So, when it came to the matter of Jack's difficulties, Mr. Stebbins could always find a half-way measure that saved the situation; and when he received the letter as to the cook and her claim he hied himself to the city at once, and wrote back that the claim could be settled for three hundred dollars.
"And enough, I must say," Aunt Mary remarked to Lucinda upon receipt of the statement; "three hundred dollars for one cat--for, after all, Jack blames the whole on the cat, an' he didn't hit it, even then."
Lucinda did not answer.
"But if the boy settles down now I shan't mind payin' the three--Where are you goin'?"
For Lucinda was walking out of the room.
"I'm goin' to the door," said she raspingly. "The bell's ringin'."
After a minute or two she came back.
"Telegram!" she announced, handing the yellow envelope over.
Aunt Mary put on her glasses, opened it, and read:
Cook has blood poison. Sues for a thousand. Probable amputation.
STEBBINS.
Aunt Mary dropped the paper with a gasp.
Lucinda looked at her with interest.
"It's that same arm again," said Aunt Mary, "just as I thought it was settled for!" Her eyes seemed to fairly crackle with indignation. "Why don't she put it in a sling an' have a little patience?"
Lucinda took the telegram and read it.
"'Pears like she can't," she commented, in a tone like a buzz saw; "'pears like it's goin' to be took off."
Aunt Mary reached forth her hand for the telegram and after a second reading shook her head in a way that, if her companion had been a globe-trotter, would have brought matadores and Seville to the front in her mind in that instant.
"I declare," she said, "seems like I had enough on my mind without a cook, too. What's to be done now? I only know one thing! I ain't goin' to pay no thousand dollars this week for no arm that wasn't worth but three hundred last week. Stands to reason that there ain't no reason in that. I guess you'd better bring me my desk, Lucinda; I'm goin' to write to Mr. Stebbins, an' I'm goin' to write to Jack, and I'm goin' to tell 'em both just what I think. I'm goin' to write Jack that he'd better be lookin' out, and I'm goin' to write to Mr. Stebbins that next time he settles things I want him to take a receipt for that arm in full."
The letters were duly written and Mr. Stebbins, upon the receipt of his, redoubled his efforts, and did succeed in permanently settling with the cook, the arm being eventually saved. Aunt Mary regarded the sum as much higher than necessary, but still pleasantly less than that demanded of her, and so life in general moved quietly on until Easter.
But Easter is always a period of more or less commotion in the time of youth and leads to various hilarious outbreaks. Jack's Easter took him to town for a "little time," and the "little time" ended in the station-house at three o'clock on Sunday morning.
Accusation: Producing concussion of the brain on a cab driver.
Chapter Two
- Jack
The news was conveyed to Aunt Mary through private advices from Mr. Stebbins (who had been hastily summoned to the city for purposes of bail); she was very angry indeed, this time--primarily at the indignity done her flesh and blood by arresting it. Then, as she re-read the