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Rh sauced up to be unlike themsels. Even the potatoes daurna look like potatoes. If the food in a club looks like what it is, the members run about, flinging up their hands and crying, "Woe is me!" Then this is another thing, you get your letters sent to the club instead of to your lodgings. You see, you would get them sooner at your lodgings, and you may have to trudge weary miles to the club for them; but that's a great advantage, and cheap at thirty pounds, is it no? I wonder they can do it at the price."

My wisest policy was to remain downstairs when these withering blasts were blowing, but probably I went up in self-defence.

"I never saw you so pugnacious before, mother."

"Oh," she would reply promptly, "you canna expect me to be sharp in the uptake when I am no a member of a club."

"But the difficulty is in becoming a member. They are very particular about whom they elect, and I daresay I shall not get in."

"Well, I'm but a poor crittur (not being member of a club), but I think I can tell you to make your mind easy on that head. You'll get in, I'se uphaud—and your thirty pounds will get in, too."

"If I get in, it will be because the editor is supporting me."

"It's the first ill thing I ever heard of him." Rh