ive nature. She gave the incident a
tighter twist by languishing at them in turns. She smiled, she sighed, she
drove them mad by taking crescent bites out of a slice of bread and
exhibiting the havoc of her little, white teeth with a delectably dainty
gluttony.

Her mother, mumbling her supper with toothless impotency, renewed her
youth vicariously, and, while she quarrelled with her daughter from the
rising of the sun to the setting of the same, she added the last straw to
the burden of the distracted suitors by announcing what a comfort Eudora
was to her and how handy she was about the house.

Warren Rodney supported the air of an exile at his own table. Beyond a
preliminary greeting to his daughter's guests, he said nothing. His
family, in their dealings with him, seemed to accord him the exemptions of
extreme age. He ate with the enthusiasm of a man to whom meals have become
the main business in life.

"How's your mine up to Bad Water comin' along, Iry?" Orlando inquired, not
from any hospitable interest in Ira's claim, but because he had sundry
romantic interests in that neighborhood and hoped to make use of the young
prospector's interest in his sister by securing an invitation to return
with him. Ira regarded the inquiry in the light of a special providence.
Here was his chance to impress Eudora with the splendor of his prospects
and at the same time smite the claims of his rivals, and behold! a brother
of his lady had led the way.

Ira cleared his throat. "They tell me she air like to yield a million any
day." At this Eudora gave him the wealth of her eyes, and her mother
reached across two of the glowering suitors and dropped a hot flapjack on
his plate.

"Who sez that she air likely to yield a million any day?" inquired Ben
Swift, openly flouting such prophecy. "Yes, who sez it?" inquired Hawks
and Taylor, joining forces for the overthrow of the common enemy.

"'They sez' is easy talkin', shore 'nuff," mumbled Mrs. Rodney, as she
helped herself to butter with her own knife.

"A sharp from the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, he said it, and he
has taken back speciments with him."

"Ye can't keep lackings from freightin' round speciments--naw, sir, ye
can't, not till the fool-killer has finished his job." Ben Swift charged
the table with the statement as the prosecution subtly appeals to the high
grade of intelligence on the part of the jury. The point told. Eudora,
wavering in her donation of hot