the
telegraph wires would never have spoken a warning to my excited fancy;
and this manifest feeling of apprehension, though I strove hard to
conceal it, held the man in the box at bay.

The practical result of the episode was a more commodious station-house,
and more men on duty. My salary was raised; but eventually I gave up the
situation because my wife could never feel satisfied to have me perform
night work after the fearful experience I have related.

As to Frank, he is not backward with explosive English whenever the
subject is mentioned, and no amount of persuasion could ever reconcile
Cato to the station-room.

A Cluster of Ripe Fruit

CHARACTER STUDY

They were five sisters, all unmarried; they lived in the old Dutch town
that was made memorable by Barbara Frietchie's exploits. They never
hoisted a Union flag, or did any grand thing; but they deserve a place
in story just the same. Their name was Peyre, and the young people
called them "The Pears", not in derision, for the regard they inspired
was little short of veneration. Their ages ranged from sixty-five to
eighty years when I first knew them. Unlike the Hannah More quintette,
they were not literary. But no hive of busy bees was ever more
industrious than they in the line of purely feminine accomplishments.

"The Pears" were not poor, but they were frugal. They owned a
comfortable two-story brick house on a quiet street, and let their
ground floor to a small tradesman. The way to the sisters led along
a smoothly-paved side alley, all fenced in, through a little kitchen
with spotless floor and shining tins, up a narrow, crooked, snow-white
stairway, and finally through funny little chambers, up two steps, or
down three, till the workshop was reached. There they sat, clean and
fresh and busy, each in her own nook; and just there they might have
been found every day these sixty years.

The workshop had the appearance of tidy fullness. An everlasting quilt
was stretched across the end window, and here Miss Becky had laid her
chalk-lines and pricked her fingers through several generations. The
faithful fingers were brown and crooked, she said, from rheumatism; but
how could they be straight when eternally bent over the patchwork?
Surely the quilt was not always the same; yet the frames were never
empty, and the chair was never vacant.

Miss Polly was housekeeper and cook, with Miss Phoebe to run errands, do
the marketing, visit the needy, and