tation for a vacation. Mr. Pilkings,
of Pilkings & Son's Standard Shoe Parlor, didn't believe in vacations.
He believed in staying home and saving money. So every year it was
necessary for Father to develop a cough, not much of a cough, merely a
small, polite noise, like a mouse begging pardon of an irate bee, yet
enough to talk about and win him a two weeks' leave. Every year he
schemed for this leave, and almost ruined his throat by sniffing snuff
to make him sneeze. Every year Mr. Pilkings said that he didn't believe
there was anything whatever the matter with Father and that, even if
there was, he shouldn't have a vacation. Every year Mother was
frightened almost to death by apprehension that they wouldn't be able to
get away.

Father laughed at her this July till his fluffy hair shook like a dog's
ears in fly-time. He pounded his fist on the prim center-table by which
Mother had been solemnly reading the picture-captions in the _Eternity
Filmco's Album of Funny Film Favorites_. The statuettes of General
Lafayette and Mozart on the false mantel shook with his lusty thumping.
He roared till his voice filled the living-room and hollowly echoed in
the porcelain sink in the kitchen.

"Why," he declaimed, "you poor little dried codfish, if it wasn't for me
you'd never have a vacation. You trust old dad to handle Pilkings. We'll
get away just as sure as God made little apples."

"You mustn't use curse-words," murmured Mother, undiscouraged by forty
years of trying to reform Father's vocabulary. "And it would be a just
judgment on you for your high mightiness if you didn't get a vacation,
and I don't believe Mr. Pilkings will give you one, either, and if it
wa'n't for--"

"Why, I've got it right under my hat."

"Yes, you always think you know so much more--"

Father rounded the table, stealthily and treacherously put his lips at
her ear, and blew a tremendous "Zzzzzzzz," which buzzed in her ear like
a file on a saw-blade.

Mother leaped up, furious, and snapped, "I'm simply ashamed of you, the
way you act, like you never would grow up and get a little common sense,
what with scaring me into conniption fits, and as I was just going to
say, and I only say it for your own good, if you haven't got enough
sense to know how little sense you have got, you at your time of life,
why, well, all I can say is--you ought to know better."

Then Father and Mother settled peacefully down and forgot all about
their disagreement.