Lucinda drew herself in through the open window with an alacrity remarkable for one of her years.

“Yes, he’s back,” she yelled.

Aunt Mary looked at her with a sort of incensed patience.

“Well, what’s he doin’?  If he’s back, where is he?  Lucinda, if you knew how hard it is for me to keep quiet you’d answer when I asked things.  Why in Heaven’s name don’t you say suthin’?  Anythin’?  Anythin’ but nothin’, that is.”

“He’s mowin’,” Lucinda shrieked.

“Sewin’!” exclaimed Aunt Mary.  “What’s he sewin’?  Where’s he sewin’?  Have you stopped doin’ his darnin’?”

Lucinda gathered breath by compressing her sides with her hands, and then replied, directing her voice right into the ear-trumpet: 

“He’s mowin’ the back lawn.”

Aunt Mary winced and shivered.

“My heavens, Lucinda!” she exclaimed, sharply.  “I wish’t there was a school to teach outsiders the use of an ear-trumpet.  They can’t seem to hit the medium between either mumblin’ or splittin’ one’s ear drums.”

Lucinda was too much out of breath from her effort to attempt any audible penitence.  Her mistress continued: 

“Well, you find him wherever he is, and tell him to harness up the buggy and go and get Mr. Stebbins as quick as ever he can.  Hurry!”

Lucinda exited with a promptitude that fulfilled all that her lady’s heart could wish.  She found Joshua whetting his scythe.

“She wants Mr. Stebbins right off,” said Lucinda.

“Then she’ll get Mr. Stebbins right off,” said Joshua.  And he headed immediately for the barn.

Lucinda ran along beside him.  It did seem to Lucinda as if in compensation for her slavery to Aunt Mary she might have had a sympathizer in Joshua.

“I guess she wants to change her will,” she panted, very much out of breath.

“Then she’ll change her will,” said Joshua.  And as his steady gait was much quicker than poor Lucinda’s halting amble, and as he saw no occasion to alter it, the conversation between them dwindled into space then and there.

Half an hour later Billy went out of the drive at a swinging pace and an hour after that Mr. Stebbins was brought captive to Aunt Mary’s throne.

She welcomed him cordially; Lucinda was promptly locked out, and then the old lady and her lawyer spent a momentous hour together.  Mr. Stebbins was taken into his client’s fullest confidence; he was regaled with enough of the week’s history to guess the rest; and he foresaw the outcome as he had foreseen it from the moment of the rupture.

Aunt Mary was very sincere in owning up to her own past errors.