I stay and look after the two kids and not let them get
poisoned or killed or anything serious? And they might have to stay
overnight, because the aunt was eccentric and often thought she was
sick; but this time she might be right. She was worth all the way from
three to four hundred thousand dollars.

"So I said I'd love to stay and look after the little ones. I wanted to
stay. Shopping in New York City the day before, two bargain sales--one
being hand-embroidered Swiss waists from two-ninety-eight upward--I felt
as if a stampede of longhorns had caught me. Darned near bedfast I was!
Say, talk about the pale, weak, nervous city woman with exhausted
vitality! See 'em in action first, say I. There was a corn-fed hussy in
a plush bonnet with forget-me-nots, two hundred and thirty or forty on
the hoof, that exhausted my vitality all right--no holds barred, an arm
like first-growth hick'ry across my windpipe, and me up against a solid
pillar of structural ironwork! Once I was wrastled by a cinnamon bear
that had lately become a mother; but the poor old thing would have lost
her life with this dame after the hand-embroidereds. Gee! I was lame in
places I'd lived fifty-eight years and never knew I had.

"So off went these ladies, with Mrs. L.H. Cummins giving me special and
private warning to be sure and keep Junior well out of it in case little
mischievous Margery started anything that would be likely to kill her.
And I looked forward to a quiet day on the lounge, where I could ache in
peace and read the 'Famous Crimes of History,' which the W.B.'s had in
twelve volumes--you wouldn't have thought there was that many, would
you? I dressed soft, out of respect to my corpse, and picked out a
corking volume of these here Crimes and lay on the big lounge by an open
window where the breeze could soothe me and where I could keep tabs on
the little ones at their sports; and everything went as right as if I
had been in some A-Number-One hospital where I had ought to of been.

"Lunchtime come before I knew it; and I had mine brought to my bed of
pain by the Swede on a tray, while the kids et theirs in an orderly and
uproarious manner in the dining-room. Rupert, Junior, was dressed like
one of these boy scouts and had his air gun at the table with him, and
little Margery was telling him there was, too, fairy princes all round
in different places; and she bet she could find one any day she wanted
to. They seemed to be all safe enough,