“If those are letters,” said Aunt Mary from her pillow the instant she heard the front door close, “I’d like ’em.  I’m a great believer in readin’ my own mail, an’ another time, Lucinda, I’ll thank you to bring it as soon as you get it an’ not stand out on the porch hollyhockin’ with Joshua for half an hour while I wait.”

Lucinda delivered up the letters without demanding what species of conversational significance her mistress attached to the phrase, “holly-hocking.”

Aunt Mary turned the letters through eagerly.

“My lands alive!” she said suddenly, “if here isn’t one from Mitchell,—­the dear boy.  Well, I never did!—­Lucinda, open the blinds to the other window, too—­so I—­can—­see to—­” her voice died away,—­she was too deep in the letter to recollect what she was saying.

Mitchell wrote: 

      MY DEAR MISS WATKINS:—­

We are sitting in a row with ashes on the heads of our cigarettes mourning, mourning, mourning, because we have had the news that you are ill.  As usual it is up to me to express our feelings, so I have decided to mail them and the others agree to pay for the ink.

I wish to remark at once that we did not sleep any last night.  Jack told us at dinner, and we spent the evening making a melancholy tour of places where we had been with you.  If you had only been with us!  The roof gardens are particularly desolate without you.  The whole of the city seems to realize it.  The watering carts weep from dawn to dark.  All the lamp-posts are wearing black.  It is sad at one extreme and sadder at the other.

You must brace up.  If you can’t do that try a belt.  Life is too short to spend in bed.  My motto has always been “Spend freely everywhere else.”  At present I recommend anything calculated to mend you.  I may in all modesty mention that just before Christmas I shall be traveling north and shall then adore to stop and cheer you up a bit if you invite me.  I have made it an invariable rule, however, not to stay over night anywhere when I am not invited, so I hope you will consider my feelings and send me an invitation.

My eyes fill as I think what it will be to sit beside you and
recall dear old New York.  It will be the next best thing to
being run over by an automobile, won’t it?

Yours, with fondest recollections,

HERBERT KENDRICK MITCHELL.

Aunt Mary laid the letter down.

“Lucinda,” she said in a curiously veiled tone, “give me a handkerchief—­a big one.  As big a one as I’ve got.”

Lucinda did as requested.

“Now, go away,” said Aunt Mary.

Lucinda went away.  She went straight to Joshua.

“She’s had a letter an’ read it an’ it’s made her cry,” she said.

“That’s better’n if it made her mad,” said Joshua, who was warming his hands at the stove.

“I ain’t sure that it won’t make her mad later,” said Lucinda.  “Say, but she is a Tartar since she came back.  Seems some days’s if I couldn’t live.”