t-cheese
to pork; he was always a great hand to keep the peace."

The junction master watched in leering silence the brittle collection of
household fittings being lifted into carts. "Well, I guess I'm glad it
ain't _me_ is goin' to have 'em for neighbors," he observed, feelingly.
"They 'll fall back on you a good deal, one thing and another; they 'm
pretty well broken down in pocket--you can see that."

Mr. Pawket in dumb disappointment climbed up into his wagon and stooped
to take the reins. For a few moments he chewed violently with his front
teeth before he spat desperately into the junction geranium-bed,
asserting with dignity:

"Oh, I guess you got no call to worry. 'Tain't as if they didn't have no
friends in this country. Willum's sort of son to me, my own boy bein'
long dead. Ef the worst comes to the worst I don't know but what I could
make a fist to help him out. Whoa, there!" Mr. Pawket, rising in his
seat, backed his team truculently. "Ef anythin's needed," he observed,
superbly, "I shall see to it myself--'twould n't take me long to buy him
a dining-room table and a few little fixin's so's he could hold up his
head in the world."

All the way home Willum's friend pondered the thing. Once when the
horses stopped to drink at a wayside trough he slapped his knee fiercely
and said: "That's the ticket! Yes, sir, that's the size of it!" At
dinner, after the twins had taken their departure, he suggested his plan
to his wife; to his immense relief she met the thing in his own spirit.

"A golden-oak dinin'-table, anyway," argued Mr. Pawket. "One or two
fancy fixin's so they can hold up their heads in the world."

"And shut people's mouths," agreed his wife. "That hotel-keeper's girl,
now, I never see any one more sassy--she with an Everything only half
done and sayin' she's goin' to be the first to get one into the vanilla,
and yet talkin' something terrible behind them and their furniture's
backs."

"How's your Everything?" asked Mr. Pawket, suddenly; a grim
determination shot into the eyes under his hairy brows.

For answer his wife rose. Unwrapping some white mosquito-netting, she
presented to view a large, bulbous object encircled with protuberances,
excrescenced with golden knobbiness--this object, strangely sticky,
smelled something like bananas; it was the Everything, completed and
unveiled. Mr. and Mrs. Pawket gazed upon it in silent admiration. As
they stood lost in contemplation of its conglomera