“Did you say we had a calf?” she asked suddenly one day. “Well, why don’t you answer? When I ask a question I expect an answer. Didn’t you say we had a calf?”
Lucinda nodded.
“Well, I want Joshua to take that calf to the blacksmith and have him shod behind an’ before right off. To-day—this minute.”
“You want the calf shod!” cried Lucinda, suddenly alarmed by the fear lest her mistress had gone light-headed.
Aunt Mary glared in a way that showed that she was far from being out of her usual mind.
“If I said shod, I guess I meant shod,” she said, icily. “I do sometimes mean what I say. Pretty often—as a usual thing.”
Lucinda stood at the foot of the bed, petrified and paralyzed.
Then the invalid sat up a little and showed some mercy on her servant’s very evident fright.
“I want the calf shod,” she explained, “so’s Joshua can run up an’ down the porch with him.”
So far from ameliorating Lucinda’s condition, this explanation rendered it visibly worse. Aunt Mary contemplated her in silence for a few seconds, and she suddenly cried out, in a tone that was full of pathos: