d immediately:

"Yes, Aunt Mary."

"When I die I want to be buried from a roof garden! Don't you forget!
You'd better go an' write it down. Go now--go this minute!"

Arethusa shook as if with the discharge of a contiguous field battery. She
had not had Lucinda's gradual breaking-in to her aunt's new trains of
thought.

"Aunt Mary," she said feebly at last.

Aunt Mary saw her lips moving; she sat up in bed and her eyes flashed
cinders.

"Well, ain't you goin'?" she asked wrathfully. "When I say do a thing,
can't it be done? I declare it's bad enough to live with a pack of idiots
without havin' 'em, one an' all, act as if I was the idiot!"

Arethusa laid aside her work and rose to quit the room. She returned five
minutes later with pen and ink, but Aunt Mary was now off on another tack.

"I want a bulldog!" she cried imperatively.

"A bulldog!" shrieked her niece, nearly dropping what she held in her
hands. "What do you want a bulldog for?"

"Not a bullfrog!" the old lady corrected; "a bulldog. Oh, I do get so sick
of your stupidity, Arethusa," she said. "What should I or any one else
want of a bullfrog?"

Arethusa sighed, and the sigh was apparent.

"I'd sigh if I was you," said her aunt. "I certainly would. If I was you,
Arethusa, I'd certainly feel that I had cause to sigh;" and with that she
sat up and gave her pillow a punch that was full of the direst sort of
suggestion.

Arethusa did not gainsay the truth of the sighing proposition. It was too
apparent.

The next day Aunt Mary slept until noon, and then opened her eyes and
simultaneously declared:

"Next summer I'm goin' to have an automobile!"

Then she looked about and saw that she had addressed the air, which made
her more mad than ever. She rang her bell violently, and Arethusa left the
lunch table so hastily that she reached the bedroom half-choked.

"Next summer I'm goin' to have an automobile," said the old lady angrily.
"Now, get me some breakfast."

Her niece went out quickly, and a maid was sent in with tea and toast and
eggs at once. Their effect was to brace the invalid up and make the lot of
those about her yet more wearing.

"I shall run it myself," she vowed, when Arethusa returned; "an' I bet
they clear out when they see me comin'."

It did seem highly probable.

"I don't know how I can live if I don't get away from here soon," she
declared a few minutes later. "You don't appreciate what life is,
Arethusa. Seems like I'll