Aunt Mary glared in a way that showed that she was far from being out of her usual mind.

“If I said shod, I guess I meant shod,” she said, icily.  “I do sometimes mean what I say.  Pretty often—­as a usual thing.”

Lucinda stood at the foot of the bed, petrified and paralyzed.

Then the invalid sat up a little and showed some mercy on her servant’s very evident fright.

“I want the calf shod,” she explained, “so’s Joshua can run up an’ down the porch with him.”

So far from ameliorating Lucinda’s condition, this explanation rendered it visibly worse.  Aunt Mary contemplated her in silence for a few seconds, and she suddenly cried out, in a tone that was full of pathos: 

“I feel like maybe—­maybe—­the calf’ll make me think it’s horses’ feet on the pavement.”

Lucinda rushed from the room.

“She wants the calf shod!” she cried, bursting in upon Joshua, who was piling wood.

For once in his life Joshua was shaken out of his usual placidity.

“She wants the calf shod!” he repeated blankly.

“Yes.”

“You can’t shoe a calf.”

“But she wants it done.”

Joshua regained his self-control.

“Oh, well,” he said, turning to go on with his work, “the calf’s gone to the butcher, anyhow.  Tell her so.”

Lucinda went back to Aunt Mary.

“The calf’s gone to the butcher,” she yelled.

Aunt Mary frowned heavily.

“Then you go an’ get a lamp and turn it up too high an’ leave it,” she said,—­“the smell’ll make me think of automobiles.”

Lucinda was appalled.  As a practical housekeeper she felt that here was a proposition which she could not face.

“Well, ain’t you goin’?” Aunt Mary asked tartly.  “Of course if you ain’t intendin’ to go I’d be glad to know it; ’n while you’re gone, Lucinda, I wish you’d get me the handle to the ice-cream freezer an’ lay it where I can see it; it’ll help me believe in the smell.”

Lucinda went away and brought the handle, but she did not light the lamp.  The Fates were good to her, though, for Aunt Mary forgot the lamp in her disgust over the appearance of the handle.

“Take it away,” she said sharply.  “Anybody’d know it wasn’t an automobile crank.  I don’t want to look like a fool!  Well, why ain’t you takin’ it away, Lucinda?”

Lucinda took the crank back to the freezer; but as the days passed on, the situation grew worse.  Aunt Mary slept more and more, and awoke to an ever-increasing ratio of belligerency.

Before long Lucinda’s third cousin demanded her assistance in “moving,” and there was nothing for poor Arethusa to do but to take up the burden, now become a fearfully heavy one.

Aunt Mary was getting to that period in life when the nearer the relative the greater the dislike, so that when her niece arrived the welcome which awaited her was even less cordial than ever.