Lucinda went back to Aunt Mary.
“The calf’s gone to the butcher,” she yelled.
Aunt Mary frowned heavily.
“Then you go an’ get a lamp and turn it up too high an’ leave it,” she said,—“the smell’ll make me think of automobiles.”
Lucinda was appalled. As a practical housekeeper she felt that here was a proposition which she could not face.
“Well, ain’t you goin’?” Aunt Mary asked tartly. “Of course if you ain’t intendin’ to go I’d be glad to know it; ’n while you’re gone, Lucinda, I wish you’d get me the handle to the ice-cream freezer an’ lay it where I can see it; it’ll help me believe in the smell.”
Lucinda went away and brought the handle, but she did not light the lamp. The Fates were good to her, though, for Aunt Mary forgot the lamp in her disgust over the appearance of the handle.
“Take it away,” she said sharply. “Anybody’d know it wasn’t an automobile crank. I don’t want to look like a fool! Well, why ain’t you takin’ it away, Lucinda?”
Lucinda took the crank back to the freezer; but as the days passed on, the situation grew worse. Aunt Mary slept more and more, and awoke to an ever-increasing ratio of belligerency.
Before long Lucinda’s third cousin demanded her assistance in “moving,” and there was nothing for poor Arethusa to do but to take up the burden, now become a fearfully heavy one.