your vote for Whitehead and the uplift, dearest Jane." 

 "William Henry," said the housewife, "I am sorry to decline, but the wife of Colonel Whitehead never was a friend of mine. Last July she gave a party—you recall her Purple Tea?—and invited all the neighbors, but she said no word to me. I don't care about your issues or your uplift or your ring, but I won't support the husband of that silly, stuck-up thing!" 

 Major Bounder was the victor on that day of stress and strife, for it seemed that many women didn't like the Colonel's wife. 

 

 

 

 THE AGENT AT THE DOOR 

 "Away with you, stranger!" exclaimed Mrs. Granger, "avaunt and skedaddle! Come here never more! You agents are making me crazy and breaking my heart, and I beg that you'll trot from my door! I've bought nutmeg graters, shoelaces and gaiters, I've bought everything from a lamp to a lyre; I've bought patent heaters and saws and egg beaters and stoves that exploded and set me afire." 

 "You're laboring under a curious blunder," the stranger protested; "I know very well that agents are trying, and dames tired of buying; but be not uneasy—I've nothing to sell." 

 "I'm used to that story—it's whiskered and hoary," replied Mrs. Granger, "you want to come in, and then when you enter, in tones of a Stentor you'll brag of your polish for silver and tin. Or maybe you're dealing in unguents healing, or dye for the whiskers, or salve for the corns, or something that quickens egg-laying in chickens, or knobs for the cattle to wear on their horns. It's no use your talking, you'd better be walking, and let me go on with my housework, I think; you look dissipated, if truth must be stated, and if you had money you'd spend it for drink." 

 "My name," said the stranger, who backed out of danger—the woman had reached for the broom by the wall—"is Septimus Beecher; I am the new preacher; I just dropped around for a pastoral call." 

 

 

 

 Prev. P 16/60 next