loped in his wife's arms for a
sister-in-law.

Abbie, a little homelier than ever with her face blubbery and
tear-drenched, turned to introduce what she had drawn in the
matrimonial lottery.

"Mamise!" she said. "I want you should meet my husbin'."

"I'm delighted!" said Mamise, before she saw her sister's fate. She
was thorough-trained if not thorough-born, and she took the shock
without reeling.

Jake's hand was not as rough so it ought to have been, and his
cordiality was sincere as he growled:

"Pleaster meecher, Mamise."

He was ready already with her first name, but she had nothing to call
him by. It never occurred to Abbie that her sister would not
instinctively know a name so familiar to Mrs. Nuddle as Mr. Nuddle,
and it was a long while before Marie Louise managed to pick it up and
piece it together.

Her embarrassment at meeting Jake was complete. She asked:

"Where are you living--here in Washington?"

"Laws, no!" said Abbie; and that reminded her of the bundles she had
dropped at the sight of Mamise. They had played havoc with the
sidewalk traffic, but she hurried to regain them.

Jake could be the gentleman when there was somebody looking who
counted. So he checked his wife with amazement at the preposterousness
of her carrying bundles while Sir Walter Raleigh was at hand. He
picked them up and brought them to Marie Louise's feet, disgusted at
the stupid amazement of his wife, who did not have sense enough to
conceal it. Marie Louise was growing alarmed at the perfect plebeiance
of her kith. She was unutterably ashamed of herself for noticing such
things, but the eye is not to blame for what it can't help seeing, nor
the ear for what is forced upon it. She had a feeling that the first
thing to do was to get her sister in out of the rain of glances from
the passers-by.

"You must come to me at once," she said. "I've just taken a house.
I've got no servants in yet, and you'll have to put up with it as it
is."

Abbie gasped at the "servants." She noted the authority with which
Marie Louise beckoned a chauffeur and pointed to the bundles, which he
hastened to seize.

Abbie was overawed by the grandeur of her first automobile and showed
it on her face. She saw many palaces on the way and expected Marie
Louise to stop at any of them. When the car drew up at Marie Louise's
home Abbie was bitterly disappointed; but when she got inside she
found her dream of paradise. Marie Louise was distressed a