invitations out for a dinner party, but she had recalled them and hastened
to obey the summons. It was an evil hour for her, for she loved her
brother and was mightily distressed at the bad news.

"I don’t believe he can have been ill," she said, at the top of her voice;
"if he’d been ill he wouldn’t have had the strength to hit the cab driver
so hard."

"I don’t blame him for hittin’ the cab driver," said Aunt Mary warmly. "As
near as I can recollect, I’ve often wanted to do that myself. But I can’t
make out where he got the man to hit, or why he was there to hit him. I
can’t make rhyme or reason out of it. I wish we knew more. Well, I presume
we will, later."

Her surmise was correct. They knew much more later. They knew more from
Mr. Stebbins, and they knew profusely more from the evening papers.

"I think our boy’d better have come home for his Easter," Aunt Mary
remarked, with a species of angry undertow threading the current of her
speech. "There’s no sayin’ what this will cost before we’re done with it."

Arethusa choked; it was all so very terrible to her.

"What is it that the cabman wants, anyhow?" her aunt demanded presently.

"He doesn’t want anything," yelled the unhappy sister. "He’s going to
die."

"Well, who is going to sue me, then?"