"She’s awful mad at him for sure, this time," said Lucinda after she had
delivered her message, and while Joshua was considering the front and back
of the letter with a deliberateness born of long servitude.

"I sh’d think she would be," he said.

As nearly all of Jack’s private difficulties were printed in every
newspaper in America, Joshua naturally was on the inside of all their
history.

"She scrinched up her face just awful over that letter," Lucinda
continued. "I’m sure I wish he’d ’a’ been by to ’a’ taken warnin’."

"He ain’t got nothin’ to really fret over," said Joshua serenely; "he
knows it, ’n’ I know it, ’n’ you know it, too."

"You don’t know nothin’ of the sort," said Lucinda. "She’s madder’n usual
this time. She’s good an’ mad. You mark my words, if he goes off on a
’nother spree this spring he’ll get cut out o’ her will."

Joshua laughed.

"You mark my words!" rasped Lucinda, shaking her finger in witchlike
warning.

Joshua laughed again.

"Them laughs best what laughs last," said Aunt Mary’s handmaiden. She
turned away, and then returned to give Joshua a look that proved that the