ng! sitting down! in the middle of the day! Thinking was
loafing with her. He was supposed to do the family thinking. It was
doubly necessary that she should work now, because he was on a strike.
He had been to a meeting of other thinkers--ground and lofty thinkers
who believed that they had discovered the true evil of the world and
its remedy.

The evil was the possession of money by those who had accumulated it.
The remedy was to take it away from them. Then the poor would be rich,
which was right, and the rich would be poor, which was righter still.

It was well known that the only way to end the bad habit of work was
to quit working. And the way to insure universal prosperity was to
burn down the factories and warehouses, destroy all machinery and
beggar the beasts who invented, invested, built, and hired and tried
to get rich by getting riches.

This program would take some little time to perfect, and meanwhile
Jake was willing that his wife should work. Indeed, a sharp fear
almost unmanned him--what if she should fall sick and have to loaf in
the horsepital? What if she should die? O Gord! Her little children
would be left motherless--and fatherless, for he would, of course, be
too busy saving the world to save his children. He would lose, too,
the prestige enjoyed only by those who have their money in their
wife's name. So he spoke to her with more than his wonted gentleness:

"Whatta hellsa matter wit choo?"

She felt the unusual concern in his voice, and smiled at him as best
she could:

"I got a kind of a jolt. I seen this here pitcher, and I thought for a
minute it was my sister."

"Your sister? How'd she get her pitcher in the paper? Who did she
shoot?"

He snatched the sheet from her and saw the young woman in the
young-manly garb.

Jake gloated over the picture: "Some looker! What is she, a queen in
burlecue?"

Mrs. Nuddle held out the burned sliver of paper.

He roared. "London's ranging beaut? And you're what thinks she's your
sister! The one that ran away? Was she a beaut like this?"

Mrs. Nuddle nodded. He whistled and said, with great tact:

"Cheese! but I have the rotten luck! Why didn't I see her first?
Whyn't you tell me more about her? You never talk about her none. Why
not?" No answer. "All I know is she went wrong and flew the coop."

Mrs. Nuddle flared at this. "Who said she went wrong?"

"You did!" Jake retorted with vigor. "Usedn't you to keep me awake
praying for her--hol