o in the great unsanitary outside, where she can use
her imagination!

"There's but one salvation for me; I must have trusted agents in the
crowd when that stuff is auctioned off, and they got to collar every last
bottle of it, no matter what the cost. I have to lay down like a pup
on the next bond drive, but this is my only hope. For the Lord's sake,
don't you go there and start bidding things up, no matter who she gets
for auctioneer! Don't you bid--even if Woodrow Wilson himself comes
out."

That's the impression Genevieve May had made on her own daughter's
husband, who is a clear-seeing man and a good citizen. And it looked
like he must secretly buy up her output. She not only come to town with
her canning outfit and her summer's stock of strange preserves, all
beauteous in their jars, but she brought with her to auction off this
stuff a regular French flying man with an honourable record.

She'd met this French officer in the city and entertained him at the
palatial Popper home; and mebbe she'd hypnotized him. He wasn't in good
shape, anyway. First place, he'd been fighting in the air for three
years and had been wounded in five places--including the Balkans. Then,
like that wasn't enough for one man, he'd been sent over here to teach
our men to fly when they got a machine; and over here he'd fell out of a
cloud one day when his brake or something went wrong, and this had give
him a nice pleasant vacation on crutches.

Genevieve had fastened on him at a time when he probably hadn't the
steely resistance Frenchmen been showing on the West Front. Or, being in
a strange country, mebbe he didn't know when politeness to Genevieve May
Popper would become mere cowardice. Anyway, he could talk English well
enough; and Genevieve May brought him to town and made a big hit.

First thing she done was to set up her stock of canned goods in a
section they give her in Horticultural Hall. Them three hundred bottles
took up a lot of room and showed up grand between the fancy-work section,
consisting of embroideries, sofa cushions, and silk patch quilts, and the
art section, consisting of hand paintings of interesting objects by
bright pupils in the public school. Then she put in her canning outfit,
with a couple of hired natives to do the work while she lectured on the
science of it and tried to get weak-minded patriots to taste things.

Genevieve May had a good time at these demonstrations, speaking in tones
of oratory and p