you can't make it mind; but,"
significantly, "you can manage a dog and train him, too. I had to learn
that girl that'd corraled Jack that a pretty face and ruffled petticoats
may catch a man, but they can't always hold him."

"What can hold 'em?" interrupted Mrs. Thomas, sighing heavily. "Not
always vittles, and cert'ny not a loving heart."

Mrs. Nitschkan snapped her book impatiently. "Now, Marthy, don't you
stir me up with that talk of yours, like men was the only prize packages
in life. I can't see what these home-body women love to fool 'emselves
so for. You're just like my Celora, Marthy. 'Mommie,' she says to me
once, 'I wonder when the right man'll come along and learn me to love
him?' Well, I happened to be makin' a dog whip jus' when she spoke, and
I says, 'Celora, if you give me much of that talk I'll give you a
hidin', big as you are. You got your man all picked out right now, and
you mean to marry him whether he thinks so or not, and he can't get away
from you no more'n a cat can from a mouse.'"

"No more than I can from you," Jose sprang to his feet with light
agility and, leaning forward, made as if about to imprint a kiss upon
her forehead.

But he had reckoned without his host. Mrs. Nitschkan's arm shot out
before he saw it, and he was sent staggering halfway across the room. "A
poor, perishin' brother tried that on me once," she remarked casually.
"It was in Willy Barker's drug store over to Mt. Tabor. Celora was with
me--she was about four--and I just set her down on the counter and said,
'Now, Celora, set good and quiet and watch Mommie go for the masher real
pretty.'"

"I don't see why you got to be so rough on the boys, Sadie," deplored
Mrs. Thomas, rocking slowly back and forth in a large chair. "'Course we
know they're devils and all, but if it wasn't for their goin's on,
trying to snatch a kiss now and then, life would seem awful tame for us
poor, patient women. And even the worst of 'em's better'n none at all.
Look at me! I had the luck to get a cross-grained, cranky one, as you
know. Poor Seth!" She drew a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her
eyes. "But you got to admit, Sadie, that even he was white enough to up
and die before I got too old for other gentlemen to take notice of me."

"What'd you want 'em to take notice of you for?" asks Mrs. Nitschkan
abstractedly, her mind on her flies.

"It's easy enough for you to talk that way," Mrs. Thomas spoke with some
heat. "You got the