The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary | Page 4

at the arrival of five orphans all
at once. And there was only Jack to continue to worry about.
Jack was not anything particularly remarkable; he was just one of those
lovable good-for-nothings that seem born to get better people into
trouble all their lives long. He had been spoiled originally by being ten
years younger than the next youngest in the family; and then, when the
children had been shipped on to Aunt Mary's tender mercies, Jack had
won her heart immediately because she accidentally discovered that he
had never been baptized, and so felt fully justified in re-naming him
after her own father and having the name branded into him for keeps by

her own religious apparatus. It followed naturally that John 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