"How do you account for the letter, then?"

"I have thought--mind, it is only a guess--that Mrs. Hardwick may have got somebody to write it for her."

"It is very singular," murmured Martha.

"What is singular?"

"Why, the very same thought has occurred to me. Somehow, I can't help feeling a little distrustful of Mrs. Hardwick, though perhaps unjustly.

What object can she have in getting possession of the child?"

"That I can't conjecture; but I have come to one determination."

"What is that?"

"Unless we learn something of Ida within a week from the time she left here, I shall go on to Philadelphia, or else send Jack, and endeavor to get track of her."

CHAPTER XXI

AUNT RACHEL'S MISHAPS

The week slipped away, and still no tidings of Ida. The house seemed lonely without her. Not until then did they understand how largely she had entered into their life and thoughts. But worse even than the sense of loss was the uncertainty as to her fate.

"It is time that we took some steps about finding Ida," the cooper said.

"I would like to go to Philadelphia myself, to make inquiries about her, but I am just now engaged upon a job which I cannot very well leave, and so I have concluded to send Jack."

"When shall I start?" exclaimed Jack.

"To-morrow morning," answered his father.

"What good do you think it will do," interposed Rachel, "to send a mere boy like Jack to Philadelphia?"

"A mere boy!" repeated her nephew, indignantly.

"A boy hardly sixteen years old," continued Rachel. "Why, he'll need somebody to take care of him. Most likely you'll have to go after him."

"What's the use of provoking a fellow so, Aunt Rachel?" said Jack. "You know I'm 'most eighteen. Hardly sixteen! Why, I might as well say you're hardly forty, when we all know you're fifty."

"Fifty!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the scandalized spinster. "It's a base slander. I'm only thirty-seven."

"Maybe I'm mistaken," said Jack, carelessly. "I didn't know exactly how old you were; I only judged from your looks."

At this point, Rachel applied a segment of a pocket handkerchief to her eyes; but, unfortunately, owing to circ.u.mstances, the effect instead of being pathetic, as she intended it to be, was simply ludicrous.

It so happened that a short time previous, the inkstand had been partially spilled upon the table, through Jack's carelessness and this handkerchief had been used to sop it up. It had been placed inadvertently upon the window seat, where it had remained until Rachel, who was sitting beside the window, called it into requisition. The ink upon it was by no means dry. The consequence was, that, when Rachel removed it from her eyes, her face was discovered to be covered with ink in streaks mingling with the tears that were falling, for Rachel always had a plentiful supply of tears at command.

The first intimation the luckless spinster had of her mishap was conveyed in a stentorian laugh from Jack.

He looked intently at the dark traces of sorrow on his aunt's face--of which she was yet unconscious--and doubling up, went off into a perfect paroxysm of laughter.

"Jack!" said his mother, reprovingly, for she had not observed the cause of his amus.e.m.e.nt, "it's improper for you to laugh at your aunt in such a rude manner."

"Oh, I can't help it, mother. Just look at her."

Thus invited, Mrs. Harding did look, and the rueful expression of Rachel, set off by the inky stains, was so irresistibly comical, that, after a hard struggle, she too gave way, and followed Jack's example.

Astonished and indignant at this unexpected behavior of her sister-in-law, Rachel burst into a fresh fit of weeping, and again had recourse to the handkerchief.

"This is too much!" she sobbed. "I've stayed here long enough, if even my sister-in-law, as well as my own nephew, from whom I expect nothing better, makes me her laughingstock. Brother Timothy, I can no longer remain in your dwelling to be laughed at; I will go to the poorhouse and end my miserable existence as a common pauper. If I only receive Christian burial when I leave the world, it will be all I hope or expect from my relatives, who will be glad enough to get rid of me."

The second application of the handkerchief had so increased the effect, that Jack found it impossible to check his laughter, while the cooper, whose attention was now drawn to his sister's face, burst out in a similar manner.

This more amazed Rachel than Martha's merriment.

"Even you, Timothy, join in ridiculing your sister!" she exclaimed, in an "_Et tu, Brute_" tone.

"We don't mean to ridicule you, Rachel," gasped her sister-in-law, "but we can't help laughing."

"At the prospect of my death!" uttered Rachel, in a tragic tone. "Well, I'm a poor, forlorn creetur, I know. Even my nearest relations make sport of me, and when I speak of dying, they shout their joy to my face."

"Yes," gasped Jack, nearly choking, "that's it exactly. It isn't your death we're laughing at, but your face."

"My face!" exclaimed the insulted spinster. "One would think I was a fright by the way you laugh at it."

"So you are!" said Jack, with a fresh burst of laughter.

"To be called a fright to my face!" shrieked Rachel, "by my own nephew!

This is too much. Timothy, I leave your house forever."

The excited maiden seized her hood; which was hanging from a nail, and was about to leave the house when she was arrested in her progress toward the door by the cooper, who stifled his laughter sufficiently to say: "Before you go, Rachel, just look in the gla.s.s."

Mechanically his sister did look, and her horrified eyes rested upon a face streaked with inky spots and lines seaming it in every direction.

In her first confusion Rachel jumped to the conclusion that she had been suddenly stricken by the plague. Accordingly she began to wring her hands in an excess of terror, and exclaimed in tones of piercing anguish:

"It is the fatal plague spot! I am marked for the tomb. The sands of my life are fast running out."

This convulsed Jack afresh with merriment, so that an observer might, not without reason, have imagined him to be in imminent danger of suffocation.

"You'll kill me, Aunt Rachel! I know you will," he gasped.

"You may order my coffin, Timothy," said Rachel, in a sepulchral voice; "I shan't live twenty-four hours. I've felt it coming on for a week past. I forgive you for all your ill-treatment. I should like to have some one go for the doctor, though I know I'm past help."

"I think," said the cooper, trying to look sober, "you will find the cold-water treatment efficacious in removing the plague spots, as you call them."

Rachel turned toward him with a puzzled look. Then, as her eyes rested for the first time upon the handkerchief she had used, its appearance at once suggested a clew by which she was enabled to account for her own.