“I want to get married right off,” said Jack decidedly.

“I think he’s too young,” put in Mrs. Rosscott hastily.

“I don’t know,” said Aunt Mary, looking at her nephew reflectively.  “Seems to me he’s big enough, an’ I’m a great believer in never dilly-dallyin’ over what’s got to be done some time.  Why not Thanksgiving?”

“Thanksgiving!” shrieked Mrs. Rosscott.

“Yes,” said Aunt Mary.  “I think it would be a good time, an’ then I can come and spend Christmas with you in the city.”

“Great idea!” declared her nephew; “me for Thanksgiving.”

“What do you say?” said Aunt Mary to the bride-to-be.

“Oh, I don’t see—­” began the latter, wrinkling her pretty forehead in a prettier perplexity and looking helplessly back and forth between their double eagerness.

“Well, why not?” said the aunt.  “It ain’t as if there was any reason for waitin’.  If there was I’d be the first to be willin’ to do all I could to be patient, but as it is—­even if you an’ Jack ain’t in any particular hurry, I am, an’ I was brought up to go right to work at gettin’ what you want as soon as you know what it is.”

“But this is so sudden,” wailed Mrs. Rosscott.

Aunt Mary glanced at her sharply.

“That’s what they all say, a’cordin’ to the papers,” she said calmly, “an’ it never is counted as anythin’ but a joke.”

“But I’m not joking,” Janice cried.

“Then you jus’ take a little time an’ think it over,” proposed the old lady,—­“I’ll tell you what you can do.  You can get me Lucinda because I want to tell her suthin’ and then you and Jack can sit down together an’ think it over anywhere an’ anyhow you like.”

“Do you really want Lucinda,” said Janice, rising to her feet, “or is it something that I can do?  You know I’m yours just the same as ever, Aunt Mary.  Next to being good to Jack, I want to always be good to you.”

Aunt Mary looked up with a light in her eyes that was fine to see.

“Bless you, my child,” she said heartily.  “I know that, but I really want Lucinda, an’ you an’ Jack can take care of yourselves for a while.  Leastways, I hope you can.  I guess you can.  I presume so, anyway.”

It was late that afternoon that Lucinda, looking as if she had been accidentally overtaken by a road-roller, joined Joshua in the potato cellar.

“Well, the sky c’n fall whenever it likes now!” she said, sitting down on an empty barrel with a resigned sigh.

“That’s a comfort to know,” said Joshua.

“She’s got it all made up for ’em to marry each other.”

“That ain’t no great news to me,” said Joshua.

“Joshua Whittlesey, you make my blood boil.  Things is goin’ rackin’ and ruinin’ at a great pace here an’ you as cold as a cauliflower over it all.”

Joshua sorted potatoes phlegmatically and said nothing.

“S’posin’ I’d ‘a’ wanted to marry him?”