The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary | Page 3

few minutes Aunt Mary herself took the field:
"Now, what do you suppose possessed that boy to shoot at a cook?" she
asked, regarding the letter with a portentous frown. "Cooks are so
awful hard to get nowadays. I don't see why he didn't shoot a tramp if
he had to shoot somethin'."
"He wa'n't tryin' to shoot a cook, 'pears like," then cried Lucinda--
Lucinda's voice, be it said, en passant, was of that sibilant and
penetrating timbre which is best illustrated in the accents of a
steamfitter's file--"'pears like he was tryin' for a cat."
"Not a bat," said her mistress correctively; "it was a cat. You look at
this letter an' you'll see. And, anyway, how could a man shootin' at a cat
hit a cook?--not 'nless she was up a tree birds'-nestin' after owls' eggs.
You don't seem to pay much attention to what I read to you, Lucinda;
only I should think your commonsense would help you out some when
it comes to a boy you've known from the time he could walk, an' a
strange cook. But, anyhow, that's neither here nor there. The question

that bothers me is, what's to pay with this damage suit? I think myself
five hundred dollars is too much for any cook's arm. A cook ain't in no
such vital need of two arms. If she has to shut the door of the oven
while she's stirrin' somethin' on the top of the stove, she can easy kick it
to with her foot. It won't be for long, anyway, and I'm a great believer
in making the best of things when you've got to."
Lucinda screwed up her face and made no comment. Lucinda's face in
repose was a cross between a monkey's and a peanut; screwed up, it
was particularly awful, and always exasperated her mistress.
"Well, why don't you say somethin', Lucinda? I ain't askin' your advice,
but, all the same, you can say anything if you've got a mind to."
"I ain't got a mind to say anythin'," the faithful maid rejoined.
"I guess you hit the nail on the head that time," said Aunt Mary,
without any unnecessary malevolence concealed behind her sarcasm;
then she re-read the note and frowned afresh.
"Five hundred dollars is too much," she said again. "I'm going to write
to Mr. Stebbins an' tell him so to-night. He can compromise on two
hundred and fifty, just as well as not. Get me some paper and my desk,
Lucinda. Now get a spryness about you."
Lucinda laid aside her work and forthwith got a spryness about her,
bringing her mistress' writing-desk with commendable alacrity. Aunt
Mary took the writing-desk and wrote fiercely for some time, to the end
that she finally wrote most of the fierceness out of herself.
"After all, boys will be boys," she said, as she sealed her letter, "and if
this is the end I shan't feel it's money wasted. I'm a great believer in
bein' patient. Most always, that is. Here, Lucinda you take this to
Joshua and tell him to take it right to mail. Be prompt, now. I'm a great
believer in doin' things prompt."
Lucinda took the letter and was prompt. "She wants this letter took
right to the mail," she said to Joshua, Aunt Mary's longest-tried

servitor.
"Then it'll be took right to mail," said Joshua.
"She's pretty mad," said Lucinda.
"Then she'll soon get over it," replied the other, taking up his hat and
preparing to depart for the barn forthwith.
Lucinda returned to Aunt Mary with a species of dried-up sigh. One is
not the less a slave because one has been enslaved for twenty years, and
Lucinda at moments did sort of peek out through her bars--possibly
envying Joshua the daily drives to mail when he had full control of
something that was alive.
Lucinda had been, comparatively speaking, young when she had come
to wait upon the pleasure of the Watkins millions, and her waiting had
been so pertinent and so patient that it had endured over a quarter of a
century. Aunt Mary had been under fifty in the hour of Lucinda's dawn;
she was over seventy now. Jack hadn't been born then; he was in
college now; and Jack's older brothers and sisters and his
dead-and-gone father and mother had been living somewhere out West
then, quite hopeful as to their own lives and quite hopeless as to the
stern old great-aunt who never had paid any attention to her niece since
she had chosen to elope with the doctor's reprobate son. Now the father
and mother were dead and buried, the brothers and sisters reinstated in
their rights and had all grown up and become great credits to the old
lady, whose heart had suddenly melted