Page:Mary Rinehart - More Tish .djvu/23

 Rh  upper hall or any other place, I guess you needn't fuss," said Tish. "Ready, Hannah." This time she shot Hannah in the broom-handle, and practically put her hors de combat; but the shot immediately after was what Tish triumphantly called a clean bull's-eye—that is, it hit the center of the target.

That is the time to stop, when one has made a bull's-eye in any sort of achievement, I take it. And Tish is nobody's fool. She took off her spectacles and wiped the perspiration and gun powder streaks from her face. She was immediately in high good humor.

"Every unprotected female should know how to handle a weapon," she said oracularly, and, sitting down on the edge of the coal-bin, proceeded to swab out the gun with a wad of cotton on the end of a stick.

"The poker has been good enough for you for fifty years," I retorted. "And if you think you look sporty, or anything but idiotic, sitting there in a flowered kimono and swabbing out the throat of that gun"

Just then the janitor came down, and Tish gave him a dollar for the use of the cellar and did not mention the furnace pipe. Aggie and I glanced at each other. Tish's demoralization had begun. From that minute, to the long and