"Fifteen thousand dollars!" she cried, aghast. "Heaven help us! What
next?"

It was Lucinda who was seated calmly opposite at this crisis.

"Do you suppose he really did it?" the aunt continued, after a minute of
appalled consideration.

"It’s about the only thing he ain’t never done," the tried and true
servant answered, her tone more gratingly penetrative than ever.

Aunt Mary eyed her sharply, not to say furiously.

"I wish you’d give a plain answer when I ask you a plain question,
Lucinda," she said coldly. "If you’d ever got a breach-of-promise suit in
the early mail you’d know how I feel. Perhaps—probably."

"I ain’t a doubt but what he done it," Lucinda screamed out; "an’ if I was
her an’ he wouldn’t marry me after sayin’ he would I’d sue him for a
hundred thousand, an’ think I let him off cheap then."

Aunt Mary deigned to smile faintly over the subtlety of this speech; but
the next minute she was frowning blacker than ever.

"A girl from Kalamazoo, too, just up in Chicago for a week—just up in
Chicago long enough to come down on me for fifteen thousand dollars."

"Maybe she’ll take five thousand instead," Lucinda remarked.

"Maybe!" ejaculated her mistress, in fine scorn. "Maybe! Well, if you