"They goin' to build on Cedar Plains."

"She's got the ideers."

"He's got the money."

"Just their ice-box alone is goin' to cost 'em two hundred dollars."

Mr. Pawket, with sudden irritation: "Now, now, now, that ain't sensible,
that ain't. Willum had ought to have talked it over with me. I'd like to
'a' reasoned with him. I could have showed him catalogues.... And them
two buildin' on Cedar Plains--it's onreasonable. It'll come hard on his
wife. She won't have no near neighbors; and look at how far they'll have
to go for weddin's and fun'rals and all."

Mrs. Pawket, suddenly bethinking her, rose and went into the "front"
room, or parlor, where, from a large mantelpiece ranged with
sugary-looking vases stuffed with brilliantly dyed grasses she plucked
the recently arrived letter. Looking at it upside down and with
nonchalance of disapproval, she put the letter before the twins,
commanding:

"Do as Grammar tells you and read it."

"That's right," said Mr. Pawket, spooning up gravy. He retucked a
kitchen towel in his neck, approving: "I don't know but what we ought to
read it. There may be sumpin' in it somebody wants we should know."

The twins handled the letter casually; they attacked the superscription
with glib unconcern.

"Hot-hell Medusa." began one twin, confidently.

He was instantly corrected by the other twin. "Yah--it is not
Hot-hell--it's _Ho_tel Medusa, It'ly. Yah!"

"It'ly? It'ly?" mused Mr. Pawket. "Well, I made out the I T, all right.
Now I ought to 'a' guessed the rest, It'ly bein' a place I'm familiar
with."

The twins were in conference.

"Medusa--you know who she was," remarked the elder twin by four seconds.

"Don't, huh? Snakes for hair--hey? Look at you and you turn into
stone--hey?"

"Shut up! She did not!"

"Shut up! She did!"

But the other twin busied himself with the post-mark.

"A. Malfi," he painfully deciphered....

"Say, Gramp', what's a Malfi?"

His brother remained engrossed with the embossed head of Medusa.

"Snakes for hair--turned 'em to stone--cut off her head," he chanted, in
blissful retrospect.

Mr. Pawket, reaching across the table, seized this student by the
collar. "Now, now, now! Whose head you cuttin' off?"

"Hern," explained this bloodthirsty twin. "She was a bad woman."

"Hey! Hey! Hey!" roared Mr. Pawket, with sudden severity. "None of that
talk here! You mind your own business, young man. Don't you give us none
of that gab." He turned t