“Aunt Mary,” she said feebly at last.
Aunt Mary saw her lips moving; she sat up in bed and her eyes flashed cinders.
“Well, ain’t you goin’?” she asked wrathfully. “When I say do a thing, can’t it be done? I declare it’s bad enough to live with a pack of idiots without havin’ ’em, one an’ all, act as if I was the idiot!”
Arethusa laid aside her work and rose to quit the room. She returned five minutes later with pen and ink, but Aunt Mary was now off on another tack.
“I want a bulldog!” she cried imperatively.
“A bulldog!” shrieked her niece, nearly dropping what she held in her hands. “What do you want a bulldog for?”
“Not a bullfrog!” the old lady corrected; “a bulldog. Oh, I do get so sick of your stupidity, Arethusa,” she said. “What should I or any one else want of a bullfrog?”
Arethusa sighed, and the sigh was apparent.
“I’d sigh if I was you,” said her aunt. “I certainly would. If I was you, Arethusa, I’d certainly feel that I had cause to sigh;” and with that she sat up and gave her pillow a punch that was full of the direst sort of suggestion.
Arethusa did not gainsay the truth of the sighing proposition. It was too apparent.