isten
while Clara J. told Tacks or Uncle Peter or Aunt Martha or Mother
what she intended doing when we moved to the country.

They had it all cooked up. Uncle Peter and Aunt Martha were coming
to live with us and Tacks would be there to let us live with him.

Uncle Peter intended starting a garden truck farm in the back yard
and Tacks figured on building a chicken coop somewhere between the
front gate and the parlor.

Aunt Martha and Clara J. almost came to blows over the question of
milking the cow. Aunt Martha insisted that cows are milked by
machinery and Clara J. was equally positive that moral suasion is
the only means by which a cow can be brought to a show down.

In the meantime I was dying every half hour.

Finally the day preceding the long-talked of country excursion
arrived and I began to figure on the safest and least inexpensive
methods of suicide.

I went to the track in the afternoon and threw out enough gold dust
to paint our country home from cellar to attic--but never a sardine
showed.

Frostbitten and suffocated by the odor of burning money I crept
into a seat in the car and began to plan my finale.

Presently an elbow poked me in the ribs and I looked into the
smiling face of Bunch Jefferson.

"Still piking, eh?" he chuckled; "you wouldn't trail along after
Your Uncle Bunch and get next to the candy man, would you? Only
$400 to the good to-day. Am I the picker from Picklesburg, son of
the old man Pickwick?--well, I guess yes!"

Then in that desperate moment I broke down and confessed all to
Bunch. I told him how my haughty spirit disdained a tip and how in
the pride of my heart I doped the cards myself and fell in the
well. I told him of my feverish desire to beat the Bookmakers down
through the earth till they yelled for mercy, and I told him of my
pitiful dilemma and how I had to build a home in the country before
noon to-morrow or do a dog trot to the Bad lands.

Then Bunch began to laugh--a long, loud, discordant laugh which
ended in, "John, I'll help you make good!" and then I began to sit
up and notice things.

"I'm away head of this pitty-pat game at the Merry-go-Round," Bunch
went on, "and it so happens that recently I peeled the wrapper off
my roll and swapped it for a country home for my sister and her
daughter. She's a young widow, my sister is, and one of the
loveliest little ladies that ever came over the hill. And she has
a daughter that's a regular plate of pe