“Listen to her now. His grandfather a pirate! Why, he was only a minister. But isn’t that like Josiah? Him and his romances and ‘traggedies’! He always had a wild desire for notoriety…always had a craze to be mixed up with any scandal or catastrophe he heard of. Why, that man didn’t like funerals because he couldn’t pretend to be the corpse. But it wasn’t that I minded. After all, his lies were interesting and I like a little frivolous conversation once in a while. He was easy enough to live with, I’ll say that for him. And I didn’t mind his sly orgies so much though I warned him what happened to my Uncle Asa. Uncle Asa threw himself into a full bath-tub when he was full, mistaking it for his bed. He broke his neck first and then he drowned. No, it was Josiah’s theology. At first I thought it was just indigestion but when I realized he meant it my conscience wouldn’t stand for it. He said there never was an Adam or Eve and he said the doctrine of predestination was blasphemous and abominable. So I told him he had to choose between me and modernism. But I suffered. I loved that man with all his faults. It has preyed on my mind all these years. What is going to become of his immortal soul?”

Nobody, not even Mrs. Binnie, tried to answer this question.

“Well,” resumed Mrs. Tillytuck more briskly, “this isn’t business. I dunno as I feel very businesslike just now. My heart don’t feel just right. This has been a shock to it. I suffer greatly from a tired heart.”

Nobody knew whether this was a physical or an emotional ailment. Mrs. Binnie understood it to be the former and asked quite sympathetically, “Did you ever try a mustard plaster at the pit of your stomach, Mrs. Tillytuck?”

“I fear that wouldn’t benefit a weary heart,” said Mrs. Tillytuck pathetically. “Possibly, madam, you have never suffered as I have from a weary wounded heart?”

“No, thank goodness my heart is all right,” said Mrs. Binnie. “My only trouble is rheumatism in the knee j’ints.”

“I have the very thing for that here,” said Mrs. Tillytuck briskly. “You try this liniment.”

Mrs. Binnie bought the liniment and Mrs. Tillytuck looked appealingly at the others. But Judy said darkly they didn’t be wanting inny beautifying messes.

“We do all be handsome enough here widout thim.”

“I’ve never seen anybody so handsome she couldn’t be handsomer,” said Mrs. Tillytuck with another sigh as she closed her bag. At the door she turned.

“I s’pose you don’t happen to know if Josiah has saved up any money these fifteen years?”

Nobody happened to know.