The little newspaper which Aleck had subscribed for was a Thursday
sheet; it would make the trip of five hundred miles from Tilbury's
village and arrive on Saturday. Tilbury's letter had started on Friday,
more than a day too late for the benefactor to die and get into that
week's issue, but in plenty of time to make connection for the next
output. Thus the Fosters had to wait almost a complete week to find out
whether anything of a satisfactory nature had happened to him or not.
It was a long, long week, and the strain was a heavy one. The pair could
hardly have borne it if their minds had not had the relief of wholesome
diversion. We have seen that they had that. The woman was piling up
fortunes right along, the man was spending them--spending all his wife
would give him a chance at, at any rate.

At last the Saturday came, and the WEEKLY SAGAMORE arrived. Mrs. Eversly
Bennett was present. She was the Presbyterian parson's wife, and was
working the Fosters for a charity. Talk now died a sudden death--on the
Foster side. Mrs. Bennett presently discovered that her hosts were not
hearing a word she was saying; so she got up, wondering and indignant,
and went away. The moment she was out of the house, Aleck eagerly tore
the wrapper from the paper, and her eyes and Sally's swept the columns
for the death-notices. Disappointment! Tilbury was not anywhere
mentioned. Aleck was a Christian from the cradle, and duty and the force
of habit required her to go through the motions. She pulled herself
together and said, with a pious two-per-cent. trade joyousness:

"Let us be humbly thankful that he has been spared; and--"

"Damn his treacherous hide, I wish--"

"Sally! For shame!"

"I don't care!" retorted the angry man. "It's the way YOU feel, and if
you weren't so immorally pious you'd be honest and say so."

Aleck said, with wounded dignity:

"I do not see how you can say such unkind and unjust things. There is no
such thing as immoral piety."

Sally felt a pang, but tried to conceal it under a shuffling attempt to
save his case by changing the form of it--as if changing the form while
retaining the juice could deceive the expert he was trying to placate.
He said:

"I didn't mean so bad as that, Aleck; I didn't really mean immoral
piety, I only meant--meant--well, conventional piety, you know; er--shop
piety; the--the--why, YOU know what I mean. Aleck--the--well, where
you put up that plated article and play it for