“Did you bring a trunk?” she asked.

“A small one,” replied the visitor.

“That’s something to be grateful for,” said the aunt.  “If I’d invited you to visit me, of course I’d feel differently about things.”

Arethusa accepted this as she accepted all things, unpacked, saw Lucinda off, assumed charge of the house, and then dragged a rocking chair to her aunt’s bedside and unfolded her sewing.  Ere she had threaded her needle Aunt Mary was sound asleep, and so her niece sewed placidly for an hour or more, until, like lightning out of a clear sky: 

“Arethusa!”

The owner of the name started—­but answered immediately: 

“Yes, Aunt Mary.”

“When I die I want to be buried from a roof garden!  Don’t you forget!  You’d better go an’ write it down.  Go now—­go this minute!”

Arethusa shook as if with the discharge of a contiguous field battery.  She had not had Lucinda’s gradual breaking-in to her aunt’s new trains of thought.

“Aunt Mary,” she said feebly at last.

Aunt Mary saw her lips moving; she sat up in bed and her eyes flashed cinders.

“Well, ain’t you goin’?” she asked wrathfully.  “When I say do a thing, can’t it be done?  I declare it’s bad enough to live with a pack of idiots without havin’ ’em, one an’ all, act as if I was the idiot!”

Arethusa laid aside her work and rose to quit the room.  She returned five minutes later with pen and ink, but Aunt Mary was now off on another tack.

“I want a bulldog!” she cried imperatively.

“A bulldog!” shrieked her niece, nearly dropping what she held in her hands.  “What do you want a bulldog for?”

“Not a bullfrog!” the old lady corrected; “a bulldog.  Oh, I do get so sick of your stupidity, Arethusa,” she said.  “What should I or any one else want of a bullfrog?”

Arethusa sighed, and the sigh was apparent.

“I’d sigh if I was you,” said her aunt.  “I certainly would.  If I was you, Arethusa, I’d certainly feel that I had cause to sigh;” and with that she sat up and gave her pillow a punch that was full of the direst sort of suggestion.

Arethusa did not gainsay the truth of the sighing proposition.  It was too apparent.

The next day Aunt Mary slept until noon, and then opened her eyes and simultaneously declared: 

“Next summer I’m goin’ to have an automobile!”

Then she looked about and saw that she had addressed the air, which made her more mad than ever.  She rang her bell violently, and Arethusa left the lunch table so hastily that she reached the bedroom half-choked.

“Next summer I’m goin’ to have an automobile,” said the old lady angrily.  “Now, get me some breakfast.”

Her niece went out quickly, and a maid was sent in with tea and toast and eggs at once.  Their effect was to brace the invalid up and make the lot of those about her yet more wearing.