There's no
deceivin' me, Lucinda!"
"Dear! dear!" cried the Trusty and True; "is that so? What's to be done?
Do you want Joshua to run anywhere?"
Aunt Mary suddenly regained her composure.
"Run anywhere?" she asked, with her usual bitter intonation. "If you ain't
the greatest fool I ever was called upon to bed and board, Lucinda! Will
you kindly explain to me how settin' Joshua trottin' is goin' to do any
mortal good to my poor boy away off there in that dreadful city?"
"He could telegraph to Miss Arethusa," Lucinda suggested. The suggestion
bespoke the superior moral quality of Lucinda's make-up--her own feeling
toward Arethusa being considered.
"I don't want her," said Aunt Mary with a positiveness that was final. "I
don't want her. My heavens, Lucinda, ain't we just had enough of her?
Anyhow, if you ain't, I have. I don't want her, nor no livin' soul except
my trunk; an' I want that just as quick as Joshua can haul it down out of
the attic."
"You ain't thinkin' of goin' travelin'!" the maid cried in consternation;
"you can't never be thinkin' of _that?_"
"No," said her mistress with fine irony; "I want the trunk to make a pie
out of, probably."
Lucinda was speechless.
"Lucinda," her mistress said, after a few seconds had faded away
unimproved, "seems to me I mentioned wantin' Joshua to get down a
trunk--seems to me I did."
The maid turned and left the room. She felt more or less dazed. Nothing so
startling as Aunt Mary's wanting a trunk had happened in years.
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