Aunt Mary wrote him a letter upon the occasion of his new start in life, Mr. Stebbins delivered him a lecture, and things went smoothly in consequence for three whole weeks.  I say three whole weeks because three whole weeks was a long time for the course of Jack’s life to flow smoothly.  At the end of a fortnight affairs were always due to run more rapidly and three weeks produced, as a general thing, some species of climax.

The climax in this case came to time as usual his evil genius inciting the young man to attempt, one very dark night, the shooting of a cat which he thought he saw upon the back fence.  Whether he really had seen a cat or not mattered very little in the later development of the matter.  He was certainly successful as far as the going off of the gun was concerned, but the damage that resulted, resulted not to any cat, but to the arm of a next-door’s cook, who was peacefully engaged in taking in her week’s wash on the other side of the fence.  The cook ceased abruptly to take in the wash, the affair was at once what is technically termed looked into, and three days later Jack became the defendant in a suit for damages.

Naturally Mr. Stebbins was at once notified and he had no choice except to write Aunt Mary.

Aunt Mary was somewhat less patient over the third escapade than she had been with the first two.

The letter found her alone with Lucinda and she read it to herself three times and then read it aloud to her companion.  Lucinda, whose thorough knowledge of the imperious will and impervious eardrums of her mistress rendered her, as a rule, extremely monosyllabic, not to say silent, vouchsafed no comment upon the contents of the epistle, and after a few minutes Aunt Mary herself took the field: 

“Now, what do you suppose possessed that boy to shoot at a cook?” she asked, regarding the letter with a portentous frown.  “Cooks are so awful hard to get nowadays.  I don’t see why he didn’t shoot a tramp if he had to shoot somethin’.”

“He wa’n’t tryin’ to shoot a cook, ’pears like,” then cried Lucinda—­ Lucinda’s voice, be it said, en passant, was of that sibilant and penetrating timbre which is best illustrated in the accents of a steamfitter’s file—­“‘pears like he was tryin’ for a cat.”

“Not a bat,” said her mistress correctively; “it was a cat.  You look at this letter an’ you’ll see.  And, anyway, how could a man shootin’ at a cat hit a cook?—­not ‘nless she was up a tree birds’-nestin’ after owls’ eggs.  You don’t seem to pay much attention to what I read to you, Lucinda; only I should think your commonsense would help you out some when it comes to a boy you’ve known from the time he could walk, an’ a strange cook.  But, anyhow, that’s neither here nor there.  The question that bothers me is, what’s to pay with this damage suit?  I think myself five hundred dollars is too much for any cook’s arm.  A cook ain’t in no such vital need of two arms.  If she has to shut the door of the oven while she’s stirrin’ somethin’ on the top of the stove, she can easy kick it to with her foot.  It won’t be for long, anyway, and I’m a great believer in making the best of things when you’ve got to.”