a faithful Newfoundland's shaggy dome. This
latter was Tom's thought.

The gentle touch, combined with his resentful feelings about the business
announcement, made him lose all self-control. He was so furious that he
could not find his voice, and if he had, his words would have been
unintelligible because of the head-cold. He sprang up from the chair,
forgetful of his blanket swaddlings, and the large basin in which his
feet were still immersed.

He lifted his hand above his head in a melodramatic way of denunciation,
but the tragic effect was completely ruined when the porcelain basin
began slipping across the hard-wood floor. He wildly threw out both hands
to clutch at something for support, but the low chair he had occupied was
not near the dressing table nor any other article of furniture in the
room.

Polly tried to save him from a fall, but he threw off her rescuing hands;
and thus he was falling to his ungraceful finish, when he managed to free
one foot and planted it on the rug as a balance. But the basin with its
wet porcelain bottom kept sliding ever farther away, and Tom still rolled
in the swaddling robes suddenly sat down unceremoniously upon the floor.

Polly faintly screamed when the basin overturned and the mustard water
ran in numerous streamlets across the waxed wood and center rug. Just at
this critical moment, Mrs. Latimer came back to give her son the dose of
quinine.

"Why, Tom! Why are you sitting on the floor?" asked she, in amazement.

That was the last straw. Polly had to smother a laugh but Tom flared out
and the thick denunciations of all the female sex, particularly western
girls, would have driven such a girl mad with anger. But Polly understood
her friend too well to believe a word he said.

Even while he still hurled every expletive he could remember and try to
enunciate, Polly sprang over to help Mrs. Latimer raise the beswaddled
young man back into the chair. He fought off her assistance, but she
stubbornly held on to his arms until he was seated in a proper position
once more.

Then she said: "Tom dear, I'm so sorry you have had such a wretched
Christmas Day. Had we but known you had such a cold we would have called
and taken you home with us. But now that Christmas is over, and I haven't
had time to say a word to you, I'll just whisper that, as a sort of late
greeting: 'If I don't find anyone I like better than you, during the next
two years, I'll make a partnership propositi