“On the other side of my mouth,” concluded Jack.  “You didn’t wait till I had got through the sentence.”

“I don’t think it proper to make light of such matters.”

“Nor I, Aunt Rachel,” said Jack, drawing down the corners of his mouth.  “I am willing to confess that this is a serious matter.  I should feel as they said the cow did, that was thrown three hundred feet into the air.”

“How was that?” inquired his mother.

“A little discouraged,” replied Jack.

All laughed except Aunt Rachel, who preserved the same severe composure, and continued to eat the pie upon her plate with the air of one gulping down medicine.

So the evening passed.  All seemed to miss Ida.  Mrs. Crump found herself stealing glances at the smaller chair beside her own in which Ida usually sat.  The cooper appeared abstracted, and did not take as much interest as usual in the evening paper.  Jack was restless, and found it difficult to fix his attention upon anything.  Even Aunt Rachel looked more dismal than usual, if such a thing be possible.

In the morning all felt brighter.

“Ida will be home to-night,” said Mrs. Crump, cheerfully.  “What an age it seems since she left us!”

“We shall know better how to appreciate her presence,” said the cooper, cheerfully.

“What time do you expect her home?  Did Mrs. Hardwick say?”

“Why no,” said Mrs. Crump, she didn’t say, but I guess she will be along in the course of the afternoon.”

“If we only knew where she had gone,” said Jack, “we could tell better.”

“But as we don’t know,” said his father, “we must wait patiently till she comes.”

“I guess,” said Mrs. Crump, in the spirit of a notable housewife, “I’ll make up some apple-turnovers for supper to-night.  There’s nothing Ida likes so well.”

“That’s where Ida is right,” said Jack, “apple-turnovers are splendid.”

“They’re very unwholesome,” remarked Aunt Rachel.

“I shouldn’t think so from the way you eat them, Aunt Rachel,” retorted Jack.  “You ate four the last time we had them for supper.”

“I didn’t think you’d begrudge me the little I eat,” said Rachel, dolefully.  “I didn’t think you took the trouble to keep account of what I ate.”

“Come, Rachel, this is unreasonable,” said her brother. “(sic) Noboby begrudges you what you eat, even if you choose to eat twice as much as you do.  I dare say, Jack ate more of them than you did.”

“I ate six,” said Jack.

Rachel, construing this into an apology, said no more; but, feeling it unnecessary to explain why she ate what she admitted to be unhealthy, added, “And if I do eat what’s unwholesome, it’s because life ain’t of any value to me.  The sooner one gets out of this vale of affliction the better.”

“And the way you take to get out of it,” said Jack, gravely, “is by eating apple-turnovers.  Whenever you die, Aunt Rachel, we shall have to put a paragraph in the papers, headed, ’Suicide by eating apple-turnovers.’”