“You’ll live,” said Joshua, and, as his hands were now well-warmed, he went out again.

After a while Aunt Mary’s bell jangled violently and Lucinda had to hurry back.

“Lucinda, did the doctor say anythin’ to you about how long he thought I might be sick?”

“Yes, he did.”

“What did he say?  I want to know jus’ what he said.  Speak up!”

“He said he didn’t have no idea how long you’d be sick.”

Aunt Mary threw a look at Lucinda that ought to have annihilated her.

“I want to see Jack,” she said.  “Bring my writin’ desk.  Right off.  Quick.”

She wrote to Jack, and he came up and spent the next Sunday with her, cheering her mightily.

“I wish the others could have come, too,” she said once an hour all through his visit.  Mitchell’s letter seemed to have bred a tremendous longing within her.

“They’ll come later,” said Jack, with hearty good-will.  “They all want to come.”

“I don’t know how we could ever have any fun up here though,” said his aunt sadly.  “My heavens alive, Jack,—­but this is an awful place to live in.  And to think that I lived to be seventy before I found it out.”

Jack took her hand and kissed it.  He did sympathize, even if he was only twenty-two and longing unutterably to be somewhere else and kissing someone else at that very minute.

“Mitchell wrote me a letter,” continued Aunt Mary.  “He said he was comin’.  Well, dear me, he can eat mince pie and drive with Joshua when he goes for the mail, but I don’t know what else I can do with him.  Oh, if I’d only been born in the city!”

Jack kissed her hand again.  He didn’t know what to say.  Aunt Mary’s lot seemed to border upon the tragic just then and there.

The next day he returned to town and Lucinda came on duty again.  She soon found that the nephew’s visit had rendered the aunt harder than ever to get along with.

“I’m goin’ to town jus’’s soon as ever I feel well enough,” she declared aggressively on more than one occasion.  “An’ nex’ time I go I’m goin’ to stay jus’’s long as ever I’m havin’ a good time.  Now, don’t contradict me, Lucinda, because it’s your place to hold your tongue.  I’m a great believer in your holding your tongue, Lucinda.”

Lucinda, who certainly never felt the slightest inclination toward contradiction, held her tongue, and the poor, unhappy one twisted about in bed, and bemoaned the quietude of her environment by the hour at a time.

“Did you say we had a calf?” she asked suddenly one day.  “Well, why don’t you answer?  When I ask a question I expect an answer.  Didn’t you say we had a calf?”

Lucinda nodded.

“Well, I want Joshua to take that calf to the blacksmith and have him shod behind an’ before right off.  To-day—­this minute.”

“You want the calf shod!” cried Lucinda, suddenly alarmed by the fear lest her mistress had gone light-headed.