Now don’t read your eyes out the way you did the last time we went off and left you, and have to wear dark glasses for a week, because I have lots of things planned to do when I get home. I’m going to have Helena Bates for a week, and there’ll be several lunches and picnics doing. O, say, Aunt Crete, mother says, if there’s any more pie-cherries to be had, you better put up some; and be sure and stone them all. I just hate them with the seeds in. And I guess that’s all; only don’t forget you promised to have all those buttonholes worked for me in those underclothes I’m making, before I get back. Are you all right? Let me see. There was something else. O, yes, mother says you don’t need to get out the best china and make a great fuss as if you had grand company; he’s only a country boy, you know. Say, Aunt Crete. Are you there? Why don’t you answer? Aunt Crete! Hello! For pity’s sake, what is the matter with this ’phone? Hello, central! O, dear! I suppose she’s gone away. That’s the way Aunt Crete always does!” Donald, a strange, amused expression upon his face, stood listening and hesitating. He did not know exactly what to do. Without any intention at all he had listened to a conversation not intended for his ears. Should he answer and tell who he was? No, for that would but embarrass Luella. Neither would it do to call Aunt Crete now, for they would be sure to find out he had heard. Perhaps it was better to keep entirely still. There seemed to be nothing serious at stake. Ruffles, and shirt-waists, and gingham aprons for a guild, and whitewashing the cellar! Nobody would die if none of them were done, and his blood boiled over the tone in which the invisible cousin at the other end of the wire had ordered Aunt Crete about. He could read the whole life-story of the patient self-sacrifice on the one hand and imposition on the other. He felt strongly impelled to do something in the matter. A rebuke of some sort should be administered. How could it best be done? Meantime Luella was fuming with the telephone girl, and the girl was declaring that she could get no answer from Midvale any more. Donald stood wickedly enjoying their discomfiture, and was at last rewarded by hearing Luella say: “Well, I guess I’ve said all I want to say, anyway; so you needn’t ring them up again. I’ve got to go out boating now.” The receiver at the shore clicked into place, and the connection was cut off.