e Joshua was shaken out of his usual placidity.

"She wants the calf shod!" he repeated blankly.

"Yes."

"You can't shoe a calf."

"But she wants it done."

Joshua regained his self-control.

"Oh, well," he said, turning to go on with his work, "the calf's gone to
the butcher, anyhow. Tell her so."

Lucinda went back to Aunt Mary.

"The calf's gone to the butcher," she yelled.

Aunt Mary frowned heavily.

"Then you go an' get a lamp and turn it up too high an' leave it," she
said,--"the smell'll make me think of automobiles."

Lucinda was appalled. As a practical housekeeper she felt that here was a
proposition which she could not face.

"Well, ain't you goin'?" Aunt Mary asked tartly. "Of course if you ain't
intendin' to go I'd be glad to know it; 'n while you're gone, Lucinda, I
wish you'd get me the handle to the ice-cream freezer an' lay it where I
can see it; it'll help me believe in the smell."

Lucinda went away and brought the handle, but she did not light the lamp.
The Fates were good to her, though, for Aunt Mary forgot the lamp in her
disgust over the appearance of the handle.

"Take it away," she said sharply. "Anybody'd know it wasn't an automobile
crank. I don't want to look like a fool! Well, why ain't you takin' it
away, Lucinda?"

Lucinda took the crank back to the freezer; but as the days passed on, the
situation grew worse. Aunt Mary slept more and more, and awoke to an
ever-increasing ratio of belligerency.

Before long Lucinda's third cousin demanded her assistance in "moving,"
and there was nothing for poor Arethusa to do but to take up the burden,
now become a fearfully heavy one.

Aunt Mary was getting to that period in life when the nearer the relative
the greater the dislike, so that when her niece arrived the welcome which
awaited her was even less cordial than ever.

"Did you bring a trunk?" she asked.

"A small one," replied the visitor.

"That's something to be grateful for," said the aunt. "If I'd invited you
to visit me, of course I'd feel differently about things."

Arethusa accepted this as she accepted all things, unpacked, saw Lucinda
off, assumed charge of the house, and then dragged a rocking chair to her
aunt's bedside and unfolded her sewing. Ere she had threaded her needle
Aunt Mary was sound asleep, and so her niece sewed placidly for an hour or
more, until, like lightning out of a clear sky:

"Arethusa!"

The owner of the name started--but answere