“Oh, Aunt Sally! He’s––dead!” remonstrated Jessica, in awestruck tones.
“And a fine job he is. There’s plenty of good-for-noughts still living. A man that’s been wicked all his life ain’t apt to turn saint at the end of it. I like folks that do their duty as they go along. If the robber, Garcia, had got well he’d likely claimed our Luis and reared him to be as bad as himself.”
“Aunt Sally, you’re uncharitable this morning. What’s made you so?”
“The plumb meanness of human natur’.”
“Your own?” asked the girl teasingly.
“No, saucebox. My boy, John’s. His, and all the rest of ’em.”
“Toward whom?”
“Oh! ’tisn’t toward anybody, out and out. If it was I’d roll up my sleeves and switch the lot of ’em, just as if they were the little tackers they act like. It’s them pesky hints and shrugged shoulders, every time the Dutch Winklers or ‘Forty-niner’ is spoke of. I wish to goodness that man’d come home and clear his name, or give me a chance to do it. He no more stole that knitting-woman’s money than I did.”
“Aunt Sally! Stole? Stole! My Ephraim! Why, you must be crazy!”