Perhaps twenty minutes had passed when the quiet of the lower floor was torn by wild shrieks and on-rushing footsteps, with voices vainly commanding silence and decorum: commands all unheeded. Then came a final rush up the stairs and Minervy distraught and dishevelled burst into Mrs. Harold's room, and without pausing to see whom she was falling upon, flung her arms about that startled woman, shrieking:
"He's daid! He's daid! Dem pore chillern is all widderless orphans. I felt it a-comin'! Who' gwine feed an' clothe and shelter dose pore lambs? Ma heart's done bruck! Done bruck!"
"Minervy! Minervy! Do you know what you are doing! Let go of Mrs. Harold this instant," ordered Peggy, nearly overcome with mortification that her guest should meet with such an experience at Severndale. "Do you hear me? Control yourself at once."
She strove to drag the hysterical creature from Mrs. Harold, but she might as well have tried to drag away a wild animal. Minervy continued to shriek and howl, while Mammy, scandalized beyond expression, scolded and stormed, and Jerome called from the hall below.
Then Mrs. Harold's sense of humor came to her rescue and she had an inspiration, for she promptly decided that there was no element of grief in Minervy's emotions.
"Minerva, Minerva, HAVE you ordered your mourning? You knew Joshua could not live," she cried.
Had she felled the woman with a blow the effect could not have been more startling. Instantly the shrieks ceased and releasing her hold Minervy struck an attitude:
"No'm, I HASN'T! I cyant think how I could a-been so careless-like, an' knowin' all de endurin' time dat I boun' fer ter be a widder. How could I a-been so light-minded?"
"Well, you have certainly got to have some black clothes right off. It would be dreadful not to have proper mourning for Joshua."
Meanwhile Peggy and Polly had fled into the next room.