this, setting bread and butter and cheese before them, and a blue plate whose extensive area was all but covered with apple cake, but now she no longer muttered in bewilderment. She confronted the jester, hands upon hips, her doll eyes shining with triumph.

"Hah! Now, mister, I ask you something good like you ask me. You git ready! Sprechen sie English?"

Dave Cowan affected to be overcome with confusion, while Minna laughed loud and long at her sally. Herman laughed with her, his head back and huge red beard lifted from his chest.

"She got you that time, mister!" he called to Dave. "Mamma's a bright one, give her a minute so she gits herself on the spot!"

"Ja! Sprechen sie English?" taunted Minna again, for a second relish of her repartee. Effusively, in her triumph, she patted the cheek of the Wilbur twin. "Ja! I could easy enough give your poppa as good like he sent, yes? Sprechen sie English, nicht wahr?"

Again her bulk trembled with honest mirth, and while this endured she went to the ice box and brought a bone for Frank, the dog. Frank fell upon it with noisy gurgles.

Dave Cowan affected further confusion at each repetition of Minna's stinging retort; acted it so convincingly that the victor at length relented and brought a plate of cookies to the table.

"I show you who is it should be foolish in the head!" she told him triumphantly.

"You got me, Minna—I admit it."

The victim pretended to be downcast, and ate his bread and cheese dejectedly. Minna went to another table to tell over the choice bit.

The Wilbur twin ate bread and cheese and looked with interest about the room. The tables and woodwork were dark, the walls and ceiling also low in tone. But there were some fine decorative notes that stood brightly out. On one wall was a lovely gold-framed picture in which a young woman of great beauty held back a sumptuous curtain revealing a castle on the Rhine set above a sunny terrace of grapevines. On the opposite wall was a richly coloured picture of a superb brewery. It was many stories in height; smoke issued from its chimneys, and before it stood a large truck to which were hitched two splendid horses. The truck was being loaded with the brewery's enlivening product. The brewery was red, the truck yellow, the 

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