lerin' at God to forgive her? Didn't you, or did
you?" No answer. "And you think this is her!" The ridiculousness of
the fantasy smote him. "Say, you must 'a' went plumb nutty! Bendin'
over that tub must 'a' gave you a rush of brains to the head."

He laughed uproariously till she wanted to kill him. She tried to take
back what she had said:

"Don't you set there tellin' me I ever told you nothin' mean about my
pore little sister. She was as good a girl as ever lived, Mamise
was."

"You're changin' your tune now, ain'tcha? Because you think she looks
like a grand dam in pants! And where dya get that Mamise stuff? What
was her honestogawd name? Maryer? You're tryin' to swell her up a
little, huh?"

"No, I ain't. She was named Marie Louise after her gran'-maw, on'y
as a baby she couldn't say it right. She said 'Mamise.' That's what
she called her poor little self--Mamise. Seems like I can see her
now, settin' on the floor like Sister. And where is she now? O
Gawd! whatever become of her, runnin' off thataway--a little
sixteen-year-ol' chile, runnin' off with a cheap thattical troupe,
because her aunt smacked her.

"She never had no maw and no bringin' up, and she was so pirty. She
had all the beauty of the fambly, folks all said."

"And that ain't no lie," said Jake, with characteristic gallantry.
"There's nothin' but monopoly everywheres in the world. She got all
the looks and I got you. I wonder who got her!"

Jake sighed as he studied the paper, ransacked it noisily for an
article about her, but, finding none, looked at the date and growled:

"Aw, this paper's nearly a year old--May, 1916, it says."

This quelled his curiosity a little, and he turned to his dinner,
flinging it into his jaws like a stoker. His wife went slip-slopping
from stove to table, ministering to him.

Jake Nuddle did not look so dangerous as he was. He was like an old
tomato-can that an anarchist has filled with dynamite and provided
with a trigger for the destruction of whosoever disturbs it.
Explosives are useful in place. But Jake was of the sort that blow up
regardless of the occasion.

His dynamite was discontent. He hated everybody who was richer or
better paid, better clothed, better spoken of than he was. Yet he had
nothing in him of that constructive envy which is called emulation and
leads to progress, to days of toil, nights of thought. His idea of
equality was not to climb to the peak, but to drag the climbers down.
Pra