"Ain't you goin' to sit down, Joshua?"

"I don't see nothin' to make me sit down here for."

"What do you think of her going?" she said, as he walked toward the door.

"I think she'll have a good time."

"At her age?"

"Havin' a good time ain't a matter o' age," said Joshua. "It's a matter o'

bein' willin' to have a good time."

Lucinda screwed her face up mightily.

"If I was sure she'd be gone for a week," she said, "I'd go a-visitin'

myself."

"She'll be gone a week," said Joshua; and the manner and matter of his speech were both those of a prophet.

Then he went out and the door slammed to behind him.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - AUNT MARY ENTRAPPED

Aunt Mary's arrival in the city just coincided with the arrival of that day's five o'clock. Five o'clock in early June is very bright daylight, therefore she was rather bewildered when the train pulled up in the darkness and electricity of the station's confusion. The change from sunlight to smoke blinded her somewhat and the view from the car window did not restore her equanimity. When the porter, to whom she had been discreetly recommended by Joshua, came for her bags, she felt woefully distressed and not at all like her usual self.

"Oh, do I have to get out?" she said. "I ain't been in this place for twenty-five years, and I was to be met."

The porter's grin hovered comfortingly over her head.

"You can stay here jus' 's long as you like, ma'am," he yelled, in the voice of a train dispatcher. "I'll send your friends in when they inquiahs."

Aunt Mary eyed him gratefully, and gave him the nickel which she had been carefully holding in her hand for the last hour.

Then she looked up, and saw Jack!

A perfectly splendid Jack, in resplendent attire, handsome, beaming, with a big bouquet of violets in his hand!

"For you, Aunt Mary," he said, and dropped them into her lap, and hugged her fervently. She clung to him with a cling that forgot the immediate past, disinheriting and all. Oh! she was so glad to see him!

The porter approached with a beneficent look.

"Has he taken good care of you, Aunt Mary?" Jack asked, as the man gathered up the things and they started to leave the car.

"Yes, indeed," Aunt Mary declared.

So Jack gave the porter a dollar.

Then they left the train.

"I was so worried," Aunt Mary said, as she went along the platform hanging on her nephew's arm. "I thought you'd met with an accident."

"I couldn't get on until the rest got off," he said, gazing down on her with a smile; "but I was on hand, all right. My, but it's good to think that you're here, Aunt Mary! Maybe you think that I don't appreciate your taking all this trouble for me, but I do, just the same."

Aunt Mary smiled all over. Everyone who pa.s.sed them was smiling, too, and that added to the general joy of the atmosphere. Aunt Mary felt proud of Jack, and rejoiced as to herself. Her content with life in general was, for the moment, limitless. She did not stop to dissect the sources of her delight. She was not in a critical mood just then.

"Why don't you stick those flowers in your belt, Aunt Mary?" her nephew asked, as they penetrated the worst of the human jungle, and the preservation of the violets appeared to be the main question of the day.

"That's what the girls do."

His aunt looked vaguely down at herself. She had no belt to stick her violets in. She wore no belt. She wore a basque. A basque is a beltless something that you can't remember, but that females did, once upon a time, cover the upper half of their forms with. Basques b.u.t.toned down the front with ten to thirty b.u.t.tons, and may be studied at leisure in any good collection of daguerreotypes. Ladies like Aunt Mary are apt to scorn such futilities as waning styles after they pa.s.s beyond a certain age, and for that reason there was no place for Jack's violets.

"Never mind," he said cheerfully, having followed her dubiousness with his understanding. "Just hang on to them a minute longer, and we'll be out of all this."

His words came true, and they finally did emerge from the seething ma.s.s and found a carriage, the door of which happened to be standing mysteriously open. Within, upon the small seat, some omniscient hands had already deposited Aunt Mary's bags. It did not take long to stow Aunt Mary, face to her luggage, and she was barely established there before her trunk came, too; and, although the coachman looked so gorgeous, he was nevertheless obliging enough to allow it to couch humbly at his feet.

Then they rolled away.

Jack sat sideways and looked at his aunt, holding her hand. His eyes were unfeignedly happy, and his companion matched his eyes. Neither seemed to recollect that one was bitterly angry, and that the other was on the verge of melancholia. Instead, Jack declared fervently:

"Aunt Mary, I've made up my mind to give you the time of your life!"

And Aunt Mary drew a sigh of relief in his words and antic.i.p.ation of their fulfillment.

"I'll be happy takin' care of you," she said, benevolently. "My!-but your letter scared me. An' yet you look well."

He laughed.

"It's the knowing you were coming that's done that, Aunt Mary. You ought to have seen me when I got your telegram. I almost turned a somersault."

Aunt Mary smiled rapturously and patted his hand.

And just then they drew up in front of the house. She looked out, and her face fell a trifle.

"It's awful high and narrow," she said.

"They all are," Jack replied, opening the carriage door and jumping out to receive her.

The door at the top of the steps opened, and a man came down for the bags.

In the hall above, a pretty maid waited with a welcoming smile.

Jack piloted his aunt, first up the entrance steps, and then up the staircase within, and led her to the lovely room which had been vacated for her. The maid followed with tea and biscuits, and the man brought the luggage and ranged it un.o.btrusively in a corner. There was a lavish richness about everything which made Aunt Mary and her trunk appear as gray and insignificant as a pair of mice, by contrast; but she didn't feel it, and so she didn't mind it.

Jack kissed her tenderly.

"Welcome to town, Aunt Mary," he said heartily, "and may you never live to look upon this day as other than the luckiest of your life!" Then, turning to the servant, he said: