dinner,” revoke Mrs. Fillups. “He are too smoky for parlour.”

[Pg 41]

From that I supposed she was talking about a stove.

“I have had mine for ten continuous years,” say Mrs. Hix saddishly, “and from experience I am sure they are all alike. No use to be neat and tidy when they are there. They will not stay put like other furniture. Set them in one place and you will find they have moved somewhere else. Dust seems to collect wherever they stand.

“I have never seen one that could make a baby comfortable. Neither are they able to hold a newspaper without dropping it carelessly here & there,” report Mrs. Hix with saddish grone of dispair.

“And yet strange thing,” interject Mrs. Fillup. “How useless home would seem if it did not contain one!”

Mrs. Fillup & Mrs. Hix now make whisper with hissy voices. I could not hear, although both my ears stood endwise with excitement. I wish folks would not be so secretive when they have secrets!

Pretty soonly Hon. Hix Lady make up-riseing and depart off. More kiss-kiss ceremony. She go. Then she step back and say[Pg 42] more. She go again, but come back for an encore. More conversations containing secretive talk. Ladies is always thus—they tell all the important news in the postscript.

[Pg 42]

Pretty soonly she was gone entirely. I step forth to Mrs. Fillups.

“Hon. Boss Lady,” I say with boldness peculiar to Samurai, “do you not hire me to be as intellectual as possible abut household duties?”

“I do exactly,” she otter. “Why do you ask to know?”

“Do you not require that I should know all peculiarities about your furniture?” I ask it.

“Absolutely everything,” she outcry.

“All well then,” I renig. “There is something I wish to know what. In recent conversation which I overheard accidently while standing at key-hole, I hear you speak about one article of furniture which I am not familiar of. By the way you describe it, it sets in parlour like piano until it begins smoking like a stove; then you move it to library where it holds baby like a cradle and supports newspapers like a table! When you set it anywheres it moves nervusly from room to 

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