stening. It was said he brushed them every night, as a woman does her
hair. His white teeth looked factory-made. His skin was red and rough, as
if from perpetual sunburn; he often went away to hot springs to take mud
baths. He was notoriously dissolute with women. Two Swedish girls who had
lived in his house were the worse for the experience. One of them he had
taken to Omaha and established in the business for which he had fitted
her. He still visited her.

Cutter lived in a state of perpetual warfare with his wife, and yet,
apparently, they never thought of separating. They dwelt in a fussy,
scroll-work house, painted white and buried in thick evergreens, with a
fussy white fence and barn. Cutter thought he knew a great deal about
horses, and usually had a colt which he was training for the track. On
Sunday mornings one could see him out at the fair grounds, speeding around
the race-course in his trotting-buggy, wearing yellow gloves and a
black-and-white-check traveling cap, his whiskers blowing back in the
breeze. If there were any boys about, Cutter would offer one of them a
quarter to hold the stop-watch, and then drive off, saying he had no
change and would "fix it up next time." No one could cut his lawn or wash
his buggy to suit him. He was so fastidious and prim about his place that
a boy would go to a good deal of trouble to throw a dead cat into his back
yard, or to dump a sackful of tin cans in his alley. It was a peculiar
combination of old-maidishness and licentiousness that made Cutter seem so
despicable.

He had certainly met his match when he married Mrs. Cutter. She was a
terrifying-looking person; almost a giantess in height, raw-boned, with
iron-gray hair, a face always flushed, and prominent, hysterical eyes.
When she meant to be entertaining and agreeable, she nodded her head
incessantly and snapped her eyes at one. Her teeth were long and curved,
like a horse's; people said babies always cried if she smiled at them. Her
face had a kind of fascination for me; it was the very color and shape of
anger. There was a gleam of something akin to insanity in her full,
intense eyes. She was formal in manner, and made calls in rustling,
steel-gray brocades and a tall bonnet with bristling aigrettes.

Mrs. Cutter painted china so assiduously that even her washbowls and
pitchers, and her husband's shaving-mug, were covered with violets and
lilies. Once when Cutter was exhibiting some of his wife's china to a