bootstraps.

"Ouch! Turn loose! I take it back! The devil! It wasn't intended for
any mortal man to marry you--Sally Ruth, I wouldn't marry you now for
forty billion dollars and a mule! Turn loose, you hussy! Turn loose!"
screeched the major.

Unheeding his anguished protests, which brought Judge Hammond Mayne on
the run, thinking somebody was being murdered, Miss Sally Ruth marched
her suitor out of her house and led him to her front gate. Here she
paused, jaws firmly set, eyes glittering, and, as with hooks of
steel, took firm hold upon the gallant major's other ear. Then she
shook him; his big crimson countenance, resembling a huge overripe
tomato, waggled deliriously to and fro.

"I was born"--_shake_--"an old maid,"--_shake, shake, shake_--"I have
lived--by the grace of God"--_shake, shake, shake_--"an old maid, and
I expect"--_shake_--"to die an old maid! I don't propose to
have"--_shake_--"an old windbag offering _me_ his blubbery old
bosom"--_shake, shake, SHAKE_--"at this time of my life!--and don't
you forget it, Appleby Cartwright! _THERE!_ You go back home"--_shake,
shake, shake_--"and sober up, you old gander, you!"

Major Appleby Cartwright stood not upon the order of his going, but
went at once, galloping as if a company of those Yankees with whom he
had once fought were upon his hindquarters with fixed bayonets.

However, they being next-door neighbors and friends of a lifetime's
standing, peace was finally patched up. In Appleboro we do not mention
this historic meeting when either of the participants can hear us,
though it is one of our classics and no home is complete without it.
The Major ever afterward eschewed Artillery Punch.

This morning, over the fence, Miss Sally Ruth addressed our invalid
directly and without prelude, after her wont. She doesn't believe in
beating about the bush:

"The wages of walking up and down the earth and going to and fro in
it, tramping like Satan, is a lost leg. Not that it wasn't intended
you should lose yours--and I hope and pray it will be a lesson to
you."

"Well, take it from me," he said grimly, "there's nobody but me
collecting my wages."

A quick approval of this plain truth showed in Miss Sally Ruth's
snapping eyes.

"Come!" said she, briskly. "If you've got sense enough to see _that_,
you're not so far away from the truth as you might be. Collecting your
wages is the good and the bad thing about life, I reckon. But
everything's intended, so yo