len's conduct and relations to each other.

The Consolidated Lint-scraping and Bandage-making Union was holding a
regular session, and gossip was at spring-tide.

"It is certainly queer," said Mrs. Tufis, one of her regulation smiles
illuminating her very artificial countenance; "it is singular to the
last degree that we don't have Miss Rachel Bond among us. She is such a
LOVELY girl. I am very, very fond of her, and her heart is thoroughly in
unison with our objects. It would seem impossible for her to keep away."

All this with the acrid sub-flavor of irony and insincerity with which
an insincere woman can not help tainting even her most sincere words.

"Yes," said Mrs. Tabitha Grimes, with a premeditated acerbity apparent
even in the threading of her needle, into the eye of which she thrust
the thread as if piercing the flesh of an enemy with a barb; "yes;" she
pulled the thread through with a motion as if she enjoyed its rasping
against the steel. "Rachel Bond started into this work quite as brash
as Harry Glen started into the war. Her enthusiasm died out about as
quickly as his courage, when it came to the actual business, and she
found there was nobody to admire her industry, or the way she got
herself up, except a parcel of married women."

The milk of human kindness had begun to curdle in Mrs. Grimes's bosom,
at an early and now rather remote age. Years of unavailing struggle
to convince Mr. Jason Grimes that more of his valuable time should be
devoted to providing for the wants of his family, and less to leading
the discussion on the condition of the country in the free parliament
that met around the stove in the corner grocery, had carried forward
this lacteal fermentation until it had converted the milky fluid into a
vinegarish whey.

"Well, why not?" asked Elmira Spelter, the main grief of whose life
was time's cruel inflexibility in scoring upon her face unconcealable
tallies of every one of his yearly flights over her head, "why shouldn't
she enjoy these golden days? Youth is passing, to her and to all of us,
like an arrow from the bow. It'd be absurd for her to waste her time in
this stuffy old place, when there are so many more attractive ones.
It ought to be enough that those of us who have only a few remnants of
beauty left, should devote them to this work."

"Well," snapped Mrs. Grimes, "your donation of good looks to the
cause--even if you give all you got--will be quite modest, something on