"You get me some paper an' my desk, Lucinda," she said. "I think it's
about time I was takin' a hand in it myself. I've been pretty patient, an'
I don't see as it's helped matters any. Now I'm goin' to write that boy a
letter that'll settle him an' his cats, an' his cooks, an' his cabmen, an'
his Kalamazoo, just once for all. I guess I can do what I set out to do.
Pretty generally--most always."

Lucinda brought the desk, and Aunt Mary frowned fearfully and began to
write the letter.

It developed very strongly. As her pen sized up the situation in black and
white, the old lady seemed to realize the iniquities of the case more and
more plainly; and as the letter grew her wrath grew also. The whole came,
in the end, to a threat--made in good earnest--to take a very serious step
indeed if any more "foolishness" developed.

Aunt Mary prided herself on her granite-like will. She had full faith in
her ability to slay her nearest and dearest if it seemed right and best to
do so.

She sealed her letter tight, stuck the stamp on square and hard, and bid
Lucinda convey it to Joshua and tell him never to quit it until he saw it
safe on to the evening train.

"She's awful mad at him for sure, this time," said Lucinda after she had
delivered her message, and while Joshua was considering the front and back
of the letter with a deliberateness born of long servitude.

"I sh'd think she would be," he said.

As nearly all of Jack's private difficulties were printed in every
newspaper in America, Joshua naturally was on the inside of all their
history.

"She scrinched up her face just awful over that letter," Lucinda
continued. "I'm sure I wish he'd 'a' been by to 'a' taken warnin'."

"He ain't got nothin' to really fret over," said Joshua serenely; "he
knows it, 'n' I know it, 'n' you know it, too."

"You don't know nothin' of the sort," said Lucinda. "She's madder'n usual
this time. She's good an' mad. You mark my words, if he goes off on a
'nother spree this spring he'll get cut out o' her will."

Joshua laughed.

"You mark my words!" rasped Lucinda, shaking her finger in witchlike
warning.

Joshua laughed again.

"Them laughs best what laughs last," said Aunt Mary's handmaiden. She
turned away, and then returned to give Joshua a look that proved that the
peppery mistress had inculcated some cayenne into the souls of those about
her. "You mark my words--them laughs best what laughs last, an' there'll be
little grin