little detail, he ought to have all his horrible old snags of teeth removed—I couldn't help noticing the state of his teeth when he was unconscious in my arms-and a nice set of false teeth in their place. No wonder he isn't healthy with such horrible, black, malodorous—really, Edna, it was awful! Probably he's had no one to point out their danger to his health-and probably he couldn't spare the money if he understood it. Then, too, I'm sure they have no bathroom in the house; he-he didn't seem altogether antiseptic, Edna!"

Edna suggested weakly: "But, dear, couldn't you find a way of presenting him with a set of teeth, and a bathroom, without getting him in wrong with his wife?"

"I seriously doubt it." Clotilde strode across the little room with the lowered eyes and knit brows of a strategizing general. "I think there's no doubt but that his wife keeps him under her big, brawny thumb-he seemed fairly terrified, actually in fear, when he mentioned her name. Probably she abuses him horribly, leads him around by the nose-Edna, suppose your own father, withered, broken, old before his time, were in my father's predicament? Ethel!-I fairly hate Ethel already-big blonde tyrant and vixen! And that poor, gentle, old halfsick man, my own father-with Ethel's big fist and big voice driving him-"

"I pass-let's go out now, dear," Edna interrupted faintly. "I see you've got more dope on this matter than I have. Especially about Ethel. My sympathies are divided, however. I begin to feel that Ethel made a large mistake when she pushed you!"

"Seriously, dear-when I think of my poor old father in the power of that woman, I shudder!" said Clotilde.

CHAPTER V

MR. HOOGHTYLING ENDEAVORS TO APPLY BRAKES TO THE TRUTH, BUT DECIDES THAT, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, YOU CAN'T TELL FROM THE LOOKS OF A FROG HOW FUR IT’LL JUMP

Ar precisely five-thirty the next morning, Henry placed his angular right elbow against Ethel's well-cushioned left fifth rib, and pushed. He did it delicately, with no unnecessary vigor; even though he had done it on an average of three times every morning for some twenty years, he never resorted to violence until violence was proved unavoidable.

Ethel slept on, snoring gently. Irritation with her for being asleep, for having had a somewhat sonorous night's rest while he had been unable to close his eyes, made him put a shade more shock than usual into Push No. 2. Ethel awoke. "Yes, Hen," she said.

"It's five-thirty, Ethel," he told her, with crispness that years of repetition had not staled.

"Yes, Hen." She sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes, blinking cheerfully at the weather through the little halfopened lace-curtained window beside the bed. "It's going to be a fine day. For all it's Saturday, I think I'll just get the washings cleared out o' the way. Then I can go right at picklin', come Monday," she announced with sprightliness and decision.

if

"Well, you'll never get at neither washin' nor picklin' you don't get up.

"Why, what's the matter with you this mornin', Hen?" she asked, not with any suggestion of faultfinding but with gentle, wifely concern. She got out into the narrow aisle that separated the bed from the window-wall of the six-by-eight bedroom, and competently, as she did everything, began to dress. "Didn't you rest well?"

Henry showed, by silence, that he wasn't prepared to engage in personalities.

"I'll bet I know why-after that-" She shut her large mouth firmly on the indignant explanation that seemed to have burst up, against her will, from her voluminous bosom. "Excuse me for mentionin' it—I didn't mean to mention it, Hen," she apologized.

Grim silence from Henry.

"I won't mention it any more, if it troubles you." Henry wriggled under the bedclothes. "That's what you've promised a dozen times a'ready, Ethel," he reminded her patiently.

"Well-and haven't I done pretty well keepin' that promise, too?"

"Not but what I could suggest a few improvements." "Well, now, I think I done pretty well!" Her voice was all gentleness, but as she finished she stamped a foot down into a shoe, a neat shoe but a trifle too small for her foot as is a lady's prerogative, with a jar that shook the floor. "You ain't maybe took into consideration my feelin's, Hen. It ain't so many wives, comin' down the road to find you lyin' with your head in a strange woman's lap, and she pattin' your face-and good-lookin', too, and young-I'll say that for her-"

"Now, Ethel-"

"Well, I just want to say, Hen, that it ain't so many wives would promise right away not to ask a question, not to say a word about it, not to think about it even! I can't keep from thinkin' about it-you hadn't ought to have asked it of me, Hen!"

She started, fully dressed, for the kitchen, shaking the house with the unconscious might and determination of her strides.

"Well, leastways, it didn't seem to hender you from restin' good," he called after her. There was relenting in his voice. Out in the kitchen, which opened directly off the bedroom, stove-lids were removed with clattering vigor, pine kindlings snapped in her powerful hands.

"For all you know, I dreamed about it," she retorted. She included in her considerable library a large dreambook, and read and believed in it with a devoutness suggestive of a Modern disciple of Freud.

"I'm always tellin' you there's nothin' into dreamssavin', maybe, too much pie and pickles for supper!" Hen announced, with some heat. She demurred: "Well, it was less'n a month ago I dreamed of dogs fightin', and that means a strange woman is goin' to cross my path and interfere with the affections of my husband. Almost half the dreams I've had ever since I can remember, it says under the Women's Interpretation colyum, for me to beware of a strange woman; of course I don't believe into it-"

"Yes, because under 'bout half all the dreams into your old book, it says 'Beware of a strange woman'! Ain't I had you read me pages to show you how foolish it was? Sometimes you give me a pain strikes right to my stummick, you do, Ethel, for a fact!"

That brought silence for a little while; then, to the accompaniment of a sizzling of frying pork, Mrs. Hooghtyling began again:

"I wouldn't be interested in all that stuff 'bout strange women, Hen, nor I wouldn't be worried so much 'bout what I saw with my own eyes yestiddy, but you know I always had the feelin' that maybe, some time, you might be tempted to-to elope."

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"Now don't go bringin' all that up agin, Ethel!"

That somehow you wasn't-" She distributed heavy crockery with a heavy hand, and her voice bespoke a heavy heart."-mine alone."

"Uh-huh!" Hen growled, really aroused. "You got to quit readin' that dream-book, and all those lousy tencent books you get down to Kingston, Ethel, or you got to quit believin' such nonsense-now, one o' two things you got to do!"

Ethel hazarded, sniffling a little: "Truth is stranger than fiction, Hen."

Mr. Hooghtyling got out of bed, began the process of dressing by kicking out his legs to shake his nightwrinkled underwear into place, growled, "Yes-accordin' to them lousy paper books!" and put on his pants. "Is breakfast 'bout ready?"

"Yes. Want your eggs boiled or fried?

"Boiled this mornin'; my stummick feels awful. And, for that same reason, I don't want to hear you talk any more, Ethel. You got out o' bed on the wrong side this mornin', and, when a person does that, they'd best keep quiet till after breakfast, anyway."

They breakfasted in absolute silence. While Henry, because of the slowness in feeding which an almost com