The cranberry bog was a goner forever, it was
feared, and a little house, very handy for sorting berries in, had had its
foundations undermined, and disappeared beneath the face of the waters
also.
Under such propitious circumstances, Aunt Mary sat by her own particular
window and looked sternly and severely out across the garden and down the
road. Lucinda sat by the other window sewing. Lucinda hadn't changed
materially, but her general appearance struck her mistress as more
irritating than ever. Everything and everybody seemed to have become more
and more irritating ever since Jack had been disinherited. Of course, it
was right that he should have been disinherited, but Aunt Mary hadn't
thought much beforehand as to what would happen afterward, and it was too
aggravating to have him turn out so well just when she had lost all
patience with him and so cast him off forever, and for him to develop such
a beautiful character, all of a sudden too--just as if education and good
advice had been his undoing and seclusion and illness were the guardian
angels arrived just in time to save him from the evil effects thereof.
It hadn't occurred to Aunt Mary that people keep on living just the same
even after they have been cut out of a will. And she never had counted on
Jack's taking his bitter medicine in the spirit he was manifesting. She
had not calculated any of the possible effects of her hasty action very
maturely, but she certainly had not anticipated a lamblike submission to
even the harshest of her edicts, nor had she expected Jack to be one who
would strictly observe the Bible regulations and so return good for
evil--in other words, write her now when he had never written her in the
bygone years (unless under sharpest financial stress of circumstances).
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