a temper of her own, and she could claw back.

"YOU needn't talk," said she. "You only took Joe Beecher when you had
given up getting anybody better. You wanted Tom Hopkinson yourself. I
haven't forgotten that blue silk dress you got and wore to meeting. You
needn't talk. You know you got that dress just to make Tom look at you,
and he didn't. You needn't talk."

"I wouldn't have married Tom Hopkinson if he had been the only man on
the face of the earth," declared Alma with dignity; but she colored
hotly.

Amanda sniffed. "Well, as near as I can find out Uncle Jim can go on
talking to himself and keeping cats, and we can't do anything," said
she.

When the two women were home, they told Alma's husband, Joe Beecher,
about their lack of success. They were quite heated with their walk and
excitement. "I call it a shame," said Alma. "Anybody knows that poor
Uncle Jim would be better off with a guardian."

"Of course," said Amanda. "What man that had a grain of horse sense
would do such a crazy thing as to keep a coal fire in a woodshed?"

"For such a slew of cats, too," said Alma, nodding fiercely.

Alma's husband, Joe Beecher, spoke timidly and undecidedly in the
defense. "You know," he said, "that Mrs. Adkins wouldn't have those cats
in the house, and cats mostly like to sit round where it's warm."

His wife regarded him. Her nose wrinkled. "I suppose next thing YOU'LL
be wanting to have a cat round where it's warm, right under my feet,
with all I have to do," said she. Her voice had an actual acidity of
sound.

Joe gasped. He was a large man with a constant expression of wondering
inquiry. It was the expression of his babyhood; he had never lost it,
and it was an expression which revealed truly the state of his mind.
Always had Joe Beecher wondered, first of all at finding himself in the
world at all, then at the various happenings of existence. He probably
wondered more about the fact of his marriage with Alma Bennet than
anything else, although he never betrayed his wonder. He was always
painfully anxious to please his wife, of whom he stood in awe. Now he
hastened to reply: "Why, no, Alma; of course I won't."

"Because," said Alma, "I haven't come to my time of life, through all
the trials I've had, to be taking any chances of breaking my bones over
any miserable, furry, four-footed animal that wouldn't catch a mouse if
one run right under her nose."

"I don't want any cat," repeated Joe, miserably. His