e point, and
who were always snatched away at the critical moment by a
jealous-minded person who was close kin but whose name she never
mentions. But it isn't as funny as it used to be. It's queer how much
tragedy there is in the comic things of life. Ever since she was born
Miss Araminta has been a pieced-and-patched-up person, and never once
has she had everything new and to match at the same time. When I told
her about some of the things that must go with the lavender satin she
began to cry a little and said she oughtn't to let herself think about
indulgences of that sort, as her poor brother was not in business at
present and needed--

"Now look here, Miss Araminta," I said. "The first preparation you
have got to make for the party is to forget you have a brother and
remember your own body, which needs attention. It has come down from a
long line of people who took very good care to put expensive things on
theirs. And another thing you ought to remember is that if your
brother didn't know he could call on you every time he lost his job--"

"My brother has never had a job." Miss Araminta sat up at once and
wiped her eyes and left, unknowing, a streak of white down a pink cheek
that turned purple at the word "job." "He has been unfortunate in not
being able to retain certain positions he has once held, but his
health--"

"Rats!" It came out without thinking, but when a man has a worn-out
wife and seven children and won't do this and won't do that because it
is beneath his lordly ideas of what a well-born person should do, it is
better for me not to speak of him out loud. I told Miss Araminta she
must excuse me, but there were some sorts of men I couldn't mention
with safety and I thought "job" was a very good word, and I would
rather have one that paid a dollar a day than borrow money to pay my
bills, and that I'd sweep the streets before I would sit down and do
nothing if I had a wife and seven children. The look on her face I
tucked away, too, to take out on days when there isn't a thing in sight
to laugh at. She can't help it, Miss Araminta can't. She was born
that way and, not being an evoluting kind, words are wasted when it
comes to trying to make her see what she doesn't want to see. There is
a lot of bummy rot in this world which has nothing to do with the
proper kind of pride, and it's my belief we are mighty apt to fill the
place in life we are fitted to fill. If a dollar a day is all I am