She obeys:
"Ere my venerated aunt peruses this calligraphy an eagle soaring in its pride of place will be by a mousing Nettles hawked at and killed."
"Poor boy!" said his aunt. "I must have a black grenadine, trimmed with bugles and flounced very deep, for mourning.—Don't forget it, Hortense."
"My last thoughts," continued the reader, "are with my revered relative; for who forgave the boyish trick, and fed me on a candy-stick, and nursed me when it made me sick?—My aunt. Who taught me to back a colt or make a book? Who entered me for the purse with Cousin Fanny Alison, but the filly bolted with Bob Ascot?—My aunt."
"Patience alive!" cried the dowager: "what does the man mean, with his doggerel poetry and slang of the stables at such a time?"
"Oh, madame! it is noble," said the poor maid with streaming eyes, and then continued:
"She besought me with the salt rheum in her optical organs to suppress my fury; but who can restrain the wrath of a Brown? She denied me the spondulics—a Latin word for cash—to carry out my nefarious purpose, though it grieved her generous heart."
"That's well thought of," said the dowager. "People talk so. We must get it to those newspaper-men. Poor Lind!"
"To those who assert a mercenary motive I triumphantly respond, 'She paid up my little bills, and has doubtless destroyed the evidences of them.'"
"They are in the steel casket," said the dowager. "Burn them. But he never would have paid."