urs or a-talkin' about 'em. I jest thought I 'd have you over
to tea, you 're sich good company."

Mrs. Smith was so impatient that she had forgotten her sewing and it lay
neglected in her lap, but in no other way did she again betray her
anxiety. She knew that there was something new to be told and that it
would be told all in good time. But when gossip has become a fine art it
must be conducted with dignity and precision.

"Let me see, I believe you take two lumps o' sugar an' no milk." Mrs.
Martin knew perfectly what her friend took. "I don't know how this tea
is. I got it from the new grocery over at the corner." She tasted it
deliberately. "It might 'a' drawed a little more." Slowly she stirred it
round and round, and then, as if she had drawn the truth from the depths
of her cup, she observed, "This is a queer world, Mis' Smith."

Mrs. Smith sighed a sigh that was appreciative and questioning at once.
"It is indeed," she echoed; "I 'm always a-sayin' to myself what a
mighty cur'us world this is."

"Have you ever got any tea from that new grocery-man?" asked her
companion, with tantalising irrelevance.

"No: I hain't never even been in there."

"Well, this here 's middlin' good; don't you think so?"

"Oh, it 's more than middlin', it 's downright good. I think I must go
into that grocery some time, myself."

"I was in there to-day, and met Mis' Murphy: she says there 's great
goin'-ons up at Miss Prime's--I never shall be able to call her Mis'
Hodges."

"You don't tell me! She and Brother 'Liphalet 'ain't had a fallin' out
already, have they? Though what more could you expect?"

"Oh, no, indeed. It ain't no fallin' out, nothin' o' the kind."

"Well, what then? What has Miss Hester--I mean Mis' Hodges been doin'
now? Where will that woman stop? What 's she done?"

"Well, you see,--do have another cup of tea, an' help yoreself to that
bread an' butter,--you see, Freddie Brent has finished at the high
school, an' they 've been wonderin' what to make him."

"Well, what air they a-goin' to make him? His father was a good
stone-mason, when he was anything."

"Humph! you don't suppose Miss Hester 's been sendin' a boy to school to
learn Latin and Greek an' algebry an' sich, to be a stone-mason, do you?
Huh uh! Said I to myself, as soon as I see her sendin' him from the
common school to high school, says I, 'She 's got big notions in her
head.' Oh, no; the father's trade was not good enough fur her boy: so