should that blessed
racket do but stop short, jist as if they'd all been shot dead; an'
jist at that very min'it I was yellin' 'gratin' nutmegs!' at the top o'
my lungs!"

She joined heartily in the shrieks of laughter, for Miss Cotton loved a
joke on herself, as well as on another.

"O' course, they all went at it again, with a bang," she continued,
"but them fellas heard, o' course, an' they started to shake. An' this
tall chap in the middle, I'm tellin' you about, was the worst of all.
I thought he'd a' took a conniption fit an' when he did manage to sober
up a bit, he stared down at me that hard, that if I'd been a skit o' a
thing like one o' you girls, I'd a' blushed, sure. But I jist stared
back at him, good and hard, I tell you, till he had to look away.

"There was lots more programme besides that, singin' an' speakin'
pieces an'--oh, land! there was one girl come switchin' in with a long
tail to her dress, that would reach clean from here to the mill, an'
the neck of it cut that low it would make a body want to get under the
seat; it was jist shameful! An' the way she sang was jist near as bad.
She squalled an' took on as if everybody she'd ever knowed had been
massacreed, an' you couldn't make out one single word she said no more
than if it had been Eyetalian. An' all them folks set with their
mouths open, an' seemed to think it was jist grand, low neck an' all,
an' when she finished up with a yell jist like the sawmill whistle,
they clapped fit to kill. I'm sure I'd heaps rather listen to Julia
Duffy singin' 'Father, dear father, come home with me now,' an' you
know what that's like."

"But that ain't near the worst yet. After all them fellas got through
some more scrabblin', out comes the tall chap again, I was tellin' you
about. Maria said it was him, or I never would a guessed it, because,
as sure as you're standin' there, Mrs. Hamilton, he was all blackened
up and togged out with a long-tailed coat, an' a high hat, an' danced,
an' cut up jist fit to kill. The people all went clean into fits; an'
I thought James Turner would a' died laughin'. It was real kind o'
comical, too, the way he went on. But now I'm comin' to the real part
o' my story. When we were goin' home on the street car, Maria says to
me, sez she, 'Do you mind the fellow that sang the coon song?' sez she.
'Well, I should think I do,' sez I, 'an' of all the bold young
scamps!'--'Well,' sez she, 'that fellow's goin' to be a Pre