Aunt Jimmy's Will

by Mabel Osgood Wright

“Bring Bird back?” she finished for him, hugging him close. “Yes, I will, and you shall both go to school to Northboro, too; but mind you, Samuel, no crowdin’ Aunt Jimmy, and it may be years yet.

“Now bustle round and help me cook up something, for I must go back to Aunt Jimmy’s before seven, as Mis’ Jedge o’ Probate Ricker is the only one I’ll trust to spell me, for Dinah Lucky’s mush in a bowl when the village folks smooth her down with their palarver.”

So Lammy flew about, sifting flour, skimming milk, or rattling cups and saucers, and it was not quite dark, supper over, and every dish washed, when he went back to the porch steps and whispered the precious hope to Twinkle, who raised one ear and his lip together as much as if he understood and cautioned silence. Then the boy began day-dreaming anew, but this time his mind, instead of following flying wheels, was busy weeding strawberry plants and carefully picking raspberries, so as not to crush them, while Bird stood by and watched. “And,” he startled himself by saying aloud, “the first thing I’ll do ’ll be to divide off a root of those red pineys and plant it up on the hill, so Bird ’ll find it next spring all in blow.”

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A few days later when Dr. Jedd and all the neighbours were convinced that Aunt Jimmy would be out in the garden again by raspberry time, with good chance of another ten years, and Mrs. Lane had made indoors more comfortable than it had been for years by a thorough cleaning and renovating, the strange old lady again upset all their calculations and died. Then in due time the lawyer from Northboro sent letters to the three nephews and their families, to Dr. Jedd, to the minister of the First Congregational Church, and to the superintendent of the new School of Industrial Art of Northboro, to meet on a certain Friday afternoon at Aunt Jimmy’s house to hear the will read.

Once more was the entire community involved in a guessing match. The summoning of the kin was a matter of course, and usually took place immediately, so that the lawyer was evidently carrying out special directions in delaying the matter for more than a week, but as to what the doctor, the minister, and the teacher from Northboro could possibly have to do in the matter was a mystery that not even the fertile brain of Mrs. Slocum could settle, either for good nor evil.

It couldn’t be that Aunt Jimmy had left these three outside men anything, for it was known that she only employed Dr. Jedd because she couldn’t help it, that she hadn’t been to church for five years because the minister had preached a sermon against avarice and the vanity of hoarding money, and as to the Northboro teacher it was positively certain that she had never even seen him, for he was a stranger in these parts, having recently been sent from New York, to take charge of the school, by a wealthy man who had been influential in founding it and whose country place was on the farther edge of the town.

Mrs. Lane was as much in the dark as any one and did not hesitate to say so, while excitement ran so high that on this particular Friday afternoon the women sat in their fore-room windows overlooking the village street with the expectant air of waiting for a passing procession.

Mrs. Dr. Jedd, Mrs. Judge of Probate Ricker, and the minister’s wife were privileged to attend the reading by courtesy for reason of being their husband’s wives, and cakes had been baked and several plans made to waylay them separately on their divers routes home to drink a cup of tea, that every detail might be gleaned for comparing of notes afterward.

“We shall soon see whether Lauretta Ann Lane’s cake is dough or fruit loaf,” sniffed Mrs. Slocum, angrily, drawing in her head suddenly from the third fruitless inspection of the road that she had made in fifteen minutes and giving it a smart bump against the sash as she did so. “Either the folks is late, or they’re gone around the back road, and if so, why? I’d just like you to tell me,” she snapped at Hope Snippin, the meek little village dressmaker who, drawn over as if she had a perpetual stitch in her side, was remaking a skirt for the lady of the house and felt very much discouraged, as it had been turned once before, at the possibility of making it look startlingly new.