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 head is gittin' weak, and she is jest on the pint of nervous prostration and heart failure."

"Heart failure and nervous prostration at nine years of age!" sez I convelsively.

"Yes," sez she, "and you'll see I'm right, though her mother wouldn't pay any attention if I should speak to her about it. She don't see me half the time," sez she, "right when I meet her face to face." She stood ready, I could see, to talk aginst Miss Greene Smythe, but I wuzn't goin' to jine in it, but I felt dretful worried about what she had told me, and sez:

"How duz Algernon stand it?"

"Oh, he won't go," sez the woman; "he jest swears and throws himself and acts so his Ma has gin up tryin' to make him go. He sez he hain't a-goin' to dance with girls and stay out all night for nobody; and he is so ugly dispositioned they dassent try to make him do what he don't want to."

"Well," sez I, "ugly or not, he shows good sense in that." But at that minute the man returned and told me Miss Greene Smythe wuz to home, and I followed him upstairs. Medora wuz away for a week or so at some other resort, and Miss Greene Smythe wuz alone, and she seemed quite glad to see me. She give me a big easy chair, and almost to once begun to consult me about the entertainment.

Sez she, "I shall have musicians and elocutionists from the city, there will be a big special train to bring the guests down, but I would like also to please the natives, if I could. I am bound to have the biggest affair of the season, and everybody who comes of course will feel bound to buy something."