The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary Part 15

"Burnett is doing finely."

Mrs. Rosscott was conscious of being suddenly and skillfully countercharged. She blushed with vexation, bit her lip in perturbation, and cast upon the trying individual opposite a look of most appealing interrogation.

"You see," said Clover pleasantly, "I was coming to town, so I came in handy for the purpose of telling you."

She gave him a glance that prayed him to be decent and go on with his errand.

"Burnett is about recovered," he said.

She clasped her hands hard.

"I wouldn't be a man for anything!" she exclaimed with sudden fervor, "they are so awfully mean. Why _don't_ you go on and tell me _what_ you've come about?"

He raised his eyebrows.

"May I?" he asked.

She choked down some of her exasperation.

"Yes, you may."

"Oh, thank you so much. I'll begin at once then. Only premising that as I go to school with your little brother, and as he is rather under a cloud just at present, we clubbed together to bring you a letter about him and Jack. He was going to dictate it, but in the end Mitch.e.l.l wrote it all.

Here it is."

With that he put his hand into his pocket, drew out an envelope and handed it to her.

"How awfully good of you," she said gratefully. "Do excuse my reading it at once, won't you? You see, I've been so anxious about-about my brother."

He nodded understandingly, and she hastily tore open the envelope and ran her eyes over the written sheets.

MY DEAR MRS. ROSSCOTT:-

Being the prize writer of the cla.s.s, I am chosen to take down the ante mortem confessions of our shattered friends. It is in a sad hour for them that I do so, because I am naturally so truthful that I shall not force you to look for my meaning between the lines. On the contrary, I shall set the cold facts out as neatly as the pickets on the fence. And in evidence thereof, I open the ball by telling you frankly that they both look fierce. If they had looked less awful, and Burnett had had more lime in his bones, we might have escaped the Powers That Be by simply admitting a sprained ankle and carefully concealing everything else. But if one man cracks where you can't finish the deal, even by the most unlimited outlay of mucilage and persistence, and another blazes his whole surface-area in a manner that seems to make the underbrush dubious to count on forever henceforth; why, you then have a logarithm the square of which is probably as far beyond your depth as I am beyond my own just at this point of this sentence.

The long and short of my fresh start is, that your brother wants to write you, but he is so handicapped (forgive me, but you're the only one who hasn't had that joke sprung on them!) with bandages, that it's cruel to expect much of him. It is true that he has his bosom friend to fall back upon, but if you could see that friend as we see him these days you wouldn't be sure whether it was true or not. The old woman, who had the peddler-and-petticoat episode, was not in it the same day with your brother's friend! I do a.s.sure you. And anyhow-even if he still has brains-his writing apparatus is all done up in arnica, so there you are!

But do not allow me to alarm you unduly! When all's said and done, they're not so badly off physically. Hair and ribs are mere vanities, anyhow, and we're here to-day and gone to-morrow!

Something much worse than disfigurements and broken bones has sprung forth from chaos, and has almost stared them out of countenance since. It is the wolf that is at the door, and the howling and prowling of their particular wolf is not to be sneezed at, let me tell you. To put a modern political face upon an ancient Greek fable, the wolf in their case symbolizes the bitter question of whose roof is going to roof them when they get out of the plaster casts that are bed and board to them just at present.

Where are they to go? All those which used to be open to them are suddenly shut tight. They've both been expelled, and both been disinherited. If I was inclined to look on the blue side of the blanket, I should certainly feel that they were playing in very tough luck. Burnett, of course, can come to you, and his soul is full of the wish to bring his fellow-fright along with him. Which wish of his is the gist of my epistle. _Can_ he bring him? He wants to know before he broaches the proposition. I'm to be skinned alive if Jack ever learns that such a plea was made, so I beg you whatever other rash acts you see fit to commit during your meteoric flight across my plane of existence, don't ever give me away. Firstly, because if I ever get a chance to do so, I'm positive that I should want to cling to you as the mistletoe does to the oak, and could not bear to be given away; and secondly, because I'm so attached to my own skin that I should really suffer pain if it was taken from me by force. Bob wants you to think it over, and let him know as to the whats and whens by return mail.

You are so inspiring that I could write you all day, but those relics of what once was, but alas! will never be again, need to be rolled up afresh in absorbent cotton, and so I must nail my Red Cross on to my left arm, and get down to business. If you saw how useful I am to your brother, you'd thank his lucky stars that I came through myself with nothing worse than getting my ear stepped on. I was hugging the ladder (being canny and careful), and the man above me toed in. Isn't it curious to think that if he'd worn braces in early youth _my_ ear would be all right now.

Behold me at your feet.

Respectfully yours,

Herbert Kendrick Mitch.e.l.l.

When Mrs. Rosscott had finished the letter she looked across at her caller, and said:

"You've read this, haven't you?"

"No," said he. "I tried to unstick it two or three times coming on the train, but it was too much for me."

"Don't you really know what it says?" she asked more earnestly.

"Yes, I do," Clover answered, "but Denham must never know that I do."

"I won't tell him," she said smiling faintly. "But surely he can't be as badly off as this says. Has he really lost all his hair?"

"Not all-only in spots," Clover rea.s.sured her; but then his recollections overcame him, and he added, with a grin: "But he's a fearful looking specimen, all right, though."

"About my brother," she went on, turning the letter thoughtfully in her fingers; "when can he get out, do they think?"

"Any time next week."

"I'll write him," she said. "I'll write him and tell him that everything will be arranged for-for-for them both."

Clover sprang to his feet.

"Oh, thank you," he exclaimed. "That's most awfully good in you!"

"Not at all," she answered. "I'm very glad to be able to welcome them. You must impress that upon them-particularly-particularly on my brother."

Clover smiled.

"I will," he said, rising to go.

"I'd ask you to stay longer," she said, holding out her hand, "but I'm due at a charity entertainment to-night, and I have to go very early."

"I know," he said; "I've come up on purpose to go to it."

"Then I shall see you there?" she asked him.

"It will be what I shall be looking forward to most of all," he said.

"It's been a great pleasure to meet you," she said, holding out her hand, "you're-well, you're 'unlike,' as they say in literary criticisms."

"Thank you," he replied; "but may I ask if you intend that as a compliment?"

"Dear me," she laughed, "let me think how I did intend it.-Yes, it was meant for a compliment."

"Thank you," he said, shaking her hand warmly, "it's so nice to know, you know. Good-by."

"Good-by."