y. "That is, if we can manage the
range."

"Oh, leave that to me," said her husband. "I guess I've handled ranges
before." Which caused more merriment, since that gentleman's business
was in the hardware line.

Fresh came another bevy of rosy faces, whose owners declared that they
had been to a cooking school and knew all about it.

"Nothing like practical demonstration," bantered the young men.

"Hurrah!" cried one Hamilton, the pet of the house. "Give me the girl
who can don a white apron, roll up her sleeves, and plunge her pretty
arms into the flour barrel! That's what I'm looking for!" and he
cleverly balanced a chair on his chin, amid a clamor of repartee and
good-natured defiance.

"Go in, the whole ship's crew!" fervently urged a family man. "It will
be the best fun of the season."

"All right!" promptly agreed the ladies. "We are ready. Now, hurry up
and get on your porter's apron in time for the next wagon of trunks.
Pray, call us when you are about to shoulder one!" which turned the
laugh on the muscular member of the group.

"I think I'd rather be parlor maid," sweetly chimed in a little blonde
beauty, with fluffy bangs.

"Suits you to a T," was the gallant response from the younger men.

"And I'll have to stand guard to keep you from flirting," put in an
adorer.

"Pot calling the kettle black!" was the saucy fling from a chorus of
school-girls who were enjoying their first seaside vacation.

"Now, grandma," exclaimed the parlor maid to a beautiful old lady with
silver hair, "you shall have a big chair right in the middle of the
dining hall, and be manager-in-chief."

Meanwhile the landlord had been overcome.

"Ladies," he now managed to articulate, and certainly he meant it, "I
don't know what to say; I don't know how to thank you. But I know what
I'll do; I'll turn away the last one of those quarrelsome blacks; root
and branch they shall go. I'm tired of living in bedlam. I shall go down
at once and start them; then I'll telegraph to New York and take the
first train out. Rest assured I shall be back to your relief as soon as
possible."

The proprietor had made himself heard in the confusion, and as he left
the parlor hearty cheers followed him, when immediately the groups of
talkers broke out again into plans and promises.

"Organize! Organize!" thundered a big man who had been jostled from his
morning paper. "There can be no success without system."

"Hear! Hear!" roared the fun-lovi