I was so happy I went over to the mantel and began to bite the bric-a-brac.

Clara J. didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she compromised by giggling at Uncle Peter, who sat on the piano stool whirling himself around rapidly and muttering, “any kind of exercise is good exercise.”

Aunt Martha stared around the room from one to another in speechless amazement, while the two innocent causes of all the trouble stood motionless, with their noses tip-tilted to the ceiling.

Presently Aunt Martha broke the spell just as I was about to eat a cut-glass vase in the gladness of my heart.

“Go to the kitchen!” she said sharply to the newcomers, whereupon they both turned in unison and looked the old lady all over.  Finally they decided to discharge Aunt Martha, for the oldest member of the troupe folded her arms decisively and said, “Sure, it ain’t in any lunatic asylum I’ll be afther livin’, bless th’ Saints!  If yez have a sinsible moment left in your head will yez give us th’ car fare back to th’ city, and it’ll be a blessed hour for me whin I plants me feet on th’ ferryboat, so it will!”

Uncle Peter checked the fiery course of the piano stool and began to make his double chin do a gurgle, whereupon the youngest of the two female impersonators handed him a glare that put out his chuckle and he started the piano stool again at the rate of 45 revolutions per minute.

“Th’ ould buffalo over there showed us up to th’ spare room, thinkin’ to be funny,” she who was fated never to be our cook, went on, “and if I wasn’t in a daffy house and him nothin’ but a bug it’s the weight of that chair he’d feel over his bald spot.  Th’ ould goosehead, to set us down on th’ porch and talk to us for an hour about th’ landshcape and th’ atmusphere, and to ask me, a respectable lady, what kind of exercise I was partial to!  It’s a Hiven’s own blessin’ I didn’t hand him a poke in th’ slats, so it is!”

Uncle Peter, with palpably assumed indifference, slid off the piano stool and faded behind the furthermost window curtain, while I went up to the belligerent visitor and said, “On your way, Gismonda; the referee gives the fight to you; here’s the gate receipts!”

With this I handed her a ten-spot which she looked at suspiciously and said, “If ever I get that ould potato pounder over in New York it’s exercise I’ll give him!  Sure, I’ll run him from th’ Bat’hry to Harlem widout a shtop for meals, bad cess to him!”

Having delivered this parting knock at Uncle Peter, the queen of the kitchen flounced out of the house, followed by the younger one who had played only a thinking part in the strenuous scene.

Aunt Martha still sat motionless in the chair, quite on the verge of tears, when Clara J. went over to her and said, “Why didn’t you tell me you were going after servants, Auntie?”

“I wanted to surprise you,” the old lady replied, plaintively.  “They were to be my contribution to the household.”