scontented with Beulah.
The weather had turned cold, and the fireplaces, so long unused, were
uniformly smoky. Cousin Ann's stomach, always delicate, turned from
tinned meats, eggs three times a day, and soda biscuits made by Bill
Harmon's wife; likewise did it turn from nuts, apples, oranges, and
bananas, on which the children thrived; so she went to the so-called
hotel for her meals. Her remarks to the landlady after two dinners and
one supper were of a character not to be endured by any outspoken,
free-born New England woman.

"I keep a hotel, and I'll give you your meals for twenty-five cents
apiece so long as you eat what's set before you and hold your tongue,"
was the irate Mrs. Buck's ultimatum. "I'll feed you," she continued
passionately, "because it's my business to put up and take in anything
that's respectable; but I won't take none o' your sass!"

Well, Cousin Ann's temper was up, too, by this time, and she declined on
her part to take any of the landlady's "sass"; so they parted, rather to
Mrs. Carey's embarrassment, as she did not wish to make enemies at the
outset. That night Cousin Ann, still smarting under the memory of Mrs.
Buck's snapping eyes, high color, and unbridled tongue, complained after
supper that her bedstead rocked whenever she moved, and asked Gilbert if
he could readjust it in some way, so that it should be as stationary as
beds usually are in a normal state.

He took his tool basket and went upstairs obediently, spending fifteen
or twenty minutes with the much-criticised article of furniture, which
he suspected of rocking merely because it couldn't bear Cousin Ann. This
idea so delighted Nancy that she was obliged to retire from Gilbert's
proximity, lest the family should observe her mirth and Gilbert's and
impute undue importance to it.

"I've done everything to the bedstead I can think of," Gilbert said, on
coming downstairs. "You can see how it works to-night, Cousin Ann!"

As a matter of fact it _did_ work, instead of remaining in perfect quiet
as a well-bred bedstead should. When the family was sound asleep at
midnight a loud crash was heard, and Cousin Ann, throwing open the door
of her room, speedily informed everybody in the house that her bed had
come down with her, giving her nerves a shock from which they probably
would never recover.

"Gilbert is far too young for the responsibilities you put upon him,
Margaret," Cousin Ann exclaimed, drawing her wrapper more closely ov