n'? 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.

"I made a big mistake about the life that boy was leadin'," she said in
the course of the conversation. "He took me everywhere where he was in the
habit of goin', an' so far from its bein' wicked, I never enjoyed myself
so much in my life. There ain't no harm in havin' fun, an' it does cost a
lot of money. I can understand it all now, an' as I'm a great believer in
settin' wrong right whenever you can, I want Jack put right in my will
right off. I wa