The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary | Page 5

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
lawyer's letter, other reflections crowded to the fore in her mind.
"Funny! Whatever could have made the boy get up and go downtown at
three in the morning, anyway?" she said. "Seems kind of queer, don't
you think, Arethusa? Do you suppose he was ill and huntin' for a drug
store?"
Arethusa had been sent for the second day previous because Lucinda's
youngest sister's youngest child had come down with scarlet fever, and
the family wanted Lucinda to enliven the quarantine. Arethusa had sent
invitations out for a dinner party, but she had recalled them and
hastened to obey the summons. It was an evil hour for her, for she
loved her brother and was mightily distressed at the bad news.

"I don't believe he can have been ill," she said, at the top of her voice;
"if he'd been ill he wouldn't have had the strength to hit the cab driver
so hard."
"I don't blame him for hittin' the cab driver," said Aunt Mary warmly.
"As near as I can recollect, I've often wanted to do that myself. But I
can't make out where he got the man to hit, or why he was there to hit
him. I can't make rhyme or reason out of it. I wish we knew more. Well,
I presume we will, later."
Her surmise was correct. They knew much more later. They knew more
from Mr. Stebbins, and they knew profusely more from the evening
papers.
"I think our boy'd better have come home for his Easter," Aunt Mary
remarked, with a species of angry undertow threading the current of her
speech. "There's no sayin' what this will cost before we're done with it."
Arethusa choked; it was all so very terrible to her.
"What is it that the cabman wants, anyhow?" her aunt demanded
presently.
"He doesn't want anything," yelled the unhappy sister. "He's going to
die."
"Well, who is going to sue me, then?"
"It's his wife; she wants five thousand dollars damages."
Aunt Mary's lips tightened.
"Five thousand dollars!" she said, with a bitter patience. "I can see that
this is goin' to be an awful business. Five thousand dollars! Dear, dear!
I must say that that wife sets a pretty high price on her husband--at least,
a'cordin' to my order of thinkin', she does. From what I've seen of
cabmen, I'd undertake to get her another just as good for a tenth of the
money, any day."

Arethusa was silent, staring thoughtfully at the newspaper cuts of a
great Tammany leader and a noted pugilist, which had been labeled as
the principals in the family tragedy.
Aunt Mary turned over another of the many papers received, and
scanned its sensational columns afresh.
"Arethusa," she exclaimed suddenly, "do you know, I bet anythin' I
know what this editor means to insinuate? It just strikes me that he's
tryin' to give the impression that our boy's been drinkin'."
"Perhaps so," Arethusa screamed.
"Well, I don't believe it," said Aunt Mary firmly, "and I ain't goin' to
believe it. And I ain't goin' to pay no five thousand dollars for no
cabman's brains, neither. You write to Mr. Stebbins to compromise on
two or maybe three."
She stopped and bit her lips and shook her head. "I don't see why Jack
grows up so hard," she murmured, half in anger and half in sorrow.
"Edward and Henry never had such times. Oh, well," she sighed, "boys
will be boys, I suppose; an' if this all results in the boy's settlin' down
it'll be money well spent in the end, after all. Maybe--probably--most
likely."
The days that followed were anxious days, but at last the cabman
rallied and concluded not to die, and Jack went off yachting with a light
heart and a choice collection of good advice from Mr. Stebbins and
Aunt Mary.
Nothing happened to mar his holiday. He ran a borrowed steam launch
on to